In 1991, the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tenn., became America's first major museum to paint a broad picture of the civil rights movement. Its content hasn't changed much since then. But this Saturday after a nearly $28 million renovation that took 18 months, the museum will reopen with a new design that aims to appeal to an older generation as well as a post-civil-rights-era audience.
About 200,000 people each year file into the courtyard of what was once the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. They gaze at the second-floor balcony where Martin Luther King Jr.
