Rosanne Black named to lead Marion County Museum

The Marion County Museum appointed a new museum director, Rosanne Black.

Black is a Marion native, but has been moving around South Carolina. 

She and her family moved back to the area when her husband became a Chaplin at McLeod Hospice.  Prior to joining the museum, Black was a teacher in Columbia and Myrtle Beach.  Black also worked as a realtor in Myrtle Beach.

Black said when this opportunity came up she knew it would be a good fit because of her teaching background and her strong family ties to Marion. 

“I feel like this job is part curator, part teaching students and part event coordinator,” she said.

“It’s a much easier transition because Tommy (Lett) has left this so organized.  He says he is just a phone call away,” said Black.
Black’s first two weeks on the job have been spent studying local history, visiting the tobacco museum, in Mullins and The Grove in Marion.

“I’m just trying to acclimate and reacquaint myself with my hometown.  I spent one day in the artifacts room just studying and learning about what we have here. Its fun learning things that I knew about, but not as much as I needed to know,” said Black.

Black said one of her favorite rooms in the museum is the classroom because her family attended school in the building.  While her daughter was visiting the museum they found a piece of their family history in the classroom.

“We were looking through the annuals and saw my aunts picture, Alma Brown, with the 1913 Swamp Foxes. There were a lot of other names I recognized too, its neat to connect with the history of your family,” said Black.

Black said she would like to continue to try to take the museum to the classroom.  “Sometimes it’s hard to get students to come here, I know in the past they have taken a trunk full of historical items to do a presentation, I’m hoping to do that,” she said.

A few of the events Black hopes the museum can host are a fashion show from the past to the present, masquerade ball, a taste of Marion, more variety with the artwork displays and to help keep all of those events organized, she wants to make a calendar of events for the museum.

“I hope to get the museum to the point that when people come to visit Marion they will want to come to museum and then I can tell them about the area from Francis Marion on up.”