Two American Civil War institutions in Richmond, Virginia, have merged to form a new museum that aims to present every perspective on the 19th Century conflict.

The American Civil War Museum, which opened on 4 May, has been created from the merger of the American Civil War Center and the Museum of the Confederacy, both of which were located in Richmond ‒ the capital of the Confederate States during the war. A new building has been constructed encompassing the historic Tredegar Ironworks, where much of the Confederacy's heavy artillery was manufactured.

The glass-walled museum holds around 16,000 artefacts, including enlarged and colorised photographs of both legendary and little-known Civil War-era Americans from both sides. It was designed by architects 3north, and the resources housed within have been digitised for the museum's online presence. Design firm Solid Light helped plan the museum's galleries, to reflect the divided nation.

The first gallery, for example, is a walk-in exhibit depicting the house of Judith Henry in Manassas, Virgina, who became the first civilian casualty of the war when her home was caught in the crossfire at the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861. The house is depicted shattering and splintering in every direction, with representations of fire and smoke projected onto media screens.

Costing US$25m (€22.32m, £19.21m) to bring about, the project owes much to the close professional relationship of historian Christy Coleman, a black African-American from Florida who was CEO of the American Civil War Center, and Waite Rawls III, a white Southerner whose great-grandfathers served as Confederate soldiers, who was executive director of the Museum of the Confederacy.

Speaking in the Smithsonian Magazine, Rawls said of the new museum's significance: "If there was ever a time that this nation needs to look at all the perspectives of the Civil War, it's now."