Exhibit Opening Event – Playhouses and Picture Palaces: The Historical Theaters of Downtown Durham
For nearly a century, the sounds of performances, laughter, music, movie audiences, and bustling crowds filled downtown Durham’s theaters. This October, the Museum of Durham History will bring some of those stories back to life with the opening of its newest exhibit, Playhouses and Picture Palaces: The Historical Theaters of Downtown Durham.
The Museum will host the opening of Playhouses and Picture Palaces on Friday, October 16, with an evening featuring music, remarks, light bites, and an opportunity to explore the new exhibit.
From the 1880s through the 1970s, downtown Durham was home to as many as 20 theater sites and over 30 named establishments, hosting everything from speeches and concerts to vaudeville, dramatic productions, minstrel shows, and, eventually, motion pictures. Playhouses and Picture Palaces explores this rich history through photographs, maps, artifacts, and stories of the venues that once animated downtown.
The Carolina Theatre takes center stage in the exhibit as Durham celebrates the theater’s centennial in 2026. The historic venue is downtown Durham’s sole remaining historic theater, and the exhibit will feature rare artifacts on loan from the Carolina Theatre, offering visitors a glimpse behind the scenes of one of Durham’s most beloved cultural landmarks.
The exhibit traces the evolution of Durham’s entertainment venues from its earliest opera houses and playhouses to the elaborate “picture palaces” that emerged during the golden age of cinema. It also examines the experiences of Black Durham residents, including the important role theaters in the thriving Hayti community played in providing spaces for Black audiences and performers during the Jim Crow era of segregation.
The exhibit follows the rise of moviegoing and the eventual decline of downtown theaters as suburbanization, urban renewal, automobiles, and television transformed American entertainment and the urban landscape.
Playhouses and Picture Palaces is supported by lead sponsor The Barnes Family Foundation as well as The Forest at Duke, Duke Arts, CT Wilson Construction Co., The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, Duke Department of Theater Studies, First Citizens Bank, and other generous individual donors.
* If you are interested in supporting the exhibit, please see this sponsorship page for more information, thank you! *