Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Unfinished museum nearly grounded for lack of money

Unfinished museum nearly grounded for lack of money

A bill that would have provided the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum $500,000 for two years has not been moved in the General Assembly.
A bill that would have provided the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum $500,000 for two years has not been moved in the General Assembly. DON BOWERS PHOTOS | SPECIAL TO THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT

By CATHERINE KOZAK, The Virginian-Pilot
© June 7, 2007


Over two decades of planning, the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum has come to embody what it is meant to interpret, inviting metaphors of survival and desperate struggle.

Instead of the seething seas and shifting shoals that destroyed thousands of ships off the Outer Banks, however, the yet-to-be-completed shipwreck museum on the tip of Hatteras Island has most lately been caught in the deadly doldrums of the state budget.

A bill that would have absorbed the museum into the state Department of Cultural Resources and provided $500,000 for two years for administrative costs has not been moved in the General Assembly, Rep. Tim Spear said Wednesday from his Raleigh office.