I was meditating on the cinematic essence of Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece Rashōmon and its comparative relevance in association with Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s original short stories when pacifyingly resting in a café in downtown Charlotte after a long walk. The jovial Espresso con Panna thawed out my emotional dust and gleefully sore legs, iota by iota, like a baby polar bear slowly licking his very first playground-wound. With Bob Dylan singing songs from his Blonde on Blonde album through cafe's speakers to me, I rolled the scenes directed by Kurosawa over and began to study the map to find my way to my next stop, the Levine Museum of the New South.

The Levine Museum of the New South, located in East Seventh Street in downtown Charlotte, North Caroline, was envisioned by Sally Dalton Robinson and Anne Batten and was incorporated in 1991. The new facility was opened in 2001, featuring the permanent exhibit “Cotton Fields to Skyscrapers: Charlotte and the Carolina Piedmont in the New South.”

The Levine Museum of the New South