Free admission to VHS this summer
From June 6–August 30, the society is offering complimentary admission as a way to honor military personnel who served in the Vietnam War and their families. Learn more
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Current exhibitions
 Soul Soldiers:
African Americans and the Vietnam Era
June 6–August 30, 2009
This award-winning exhibition, organized by the Senator John Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh, explores the issues, actions, reactions, and expressions of life and culture of African Americans as they were affected by the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. Over 160 artifacts, photographs, reprographics, audio recordings, songs, oral histories, and an original documentary show how events in the 1960s helped frame African American political and social perspectives that extended beyond civil rights. The roles of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Colin Powell, Jimi Hendrix, and many more are explored, as well as the 9,000 women who served as nurses and in clerical and support positions during the war. At the end of the exhibition, letters to the families of MIAs provide a lens for understanding postwar reflections.
(Pictured above: Soldiers doing the dap at Camp Tien Sha in 1969, Courtesy of Janice Terry)
What's related:
• Press release | Gallery walk
 Marking Time: Voyage to Vietnam
June 6–August 30, 2009
Organized by the Vietnam Graffiti Project, this exhibition features a cache of Vietnam War soldier art of striking importance and poignancy. Soldiers and Marines on the ship USNS General Nelson M. Walker, bound for Vietnam in 1967, inscribed graffiti phrases and images on the bottom side of canvas bunks in the troop compartments. Men wrote their name and hometown, the date they expected to leave the service, and kept day-by-day calendars to mark the voyage progress. Original graffiti-covered canvases, discovered in the process of scrapping the vessel in 2005, display messages of patriotism, politics, humor, anxiety, and love.
What's related:
• Press release
Bring Paul Home: Phyllis Galanti and Vietnam War POWs
June 6–August 30, 2009
This exhibition is based on the collection given to the Virginia Historical Society by Richmond resident Phyllis Galanti. Her husband, Paul, was a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy when his plane was shot down over Vietnam on June 17, 1966. Mr. Galanti was a Prisoner of War (POW) until February 12, 1973. Archival and museum objects from the donated collection show Mrs. Galanti's efforts, and those of the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia, to publicize the plight of their loved ones and to secure their release.
What's related:
• Press release | Gallery walk
 The African American Image in Virginia
February 1–December 30, 2009
Covering almost four centuries of African American history and culture in Virginia through pictorial representation in art, this exhibition tells the story of free and enslaved laborers, young and old family members, students, professionals, and officials. Items on display include prints, paintings, photographs, magazine and book illustrations, and advertisements. Positive and negative depictions are included, and sometimes paired, as a means of examining the changing status of African Americans. Through their diverse experiences, museum visitors will see how African Americans perceive themselves, and how they are perceived by others, throughout Virginia's history.
What's related:
• Press release
 Heads and Tales
April 26, 2008–December 30, 2009 (first rotation)
Heads and Tales presents portraits of five people with compelling personal stories—a woman who inspired the English poet Alexander Pope; a royal governor who was murdered by a mob; a Federalist politician struggling against the tide in Jeffersonian Virginia; a patron of the arts who made his fortune as a robber baron in the Gilded Age; and a Virginia suffragette, freethinker, and political radical. Their tales are told by analysis of components of their pictorially complex portraits.
What's related:
• Press release | Gallery walk | Online exhibition
 Virginians at Work
Long-term exhibition
This long-term exhibition tells the story of how Virginians have made a living and why jobs have changed over time. Focusing on people rather than on abstract principles, the exhibition follows four broad categories: "A Colonial Economy (1600–1780)"; "A Commercial Economy (1780–1865)"; "An Industrial Economy (1865–1945)"; and "A Service Economy (1945–2006)." These titles refer to the most dynamic elements of the economy for each period. Learn more
What's related:
• Press release
 The Story of Virginia, an American Experience
Long-term exhibition
This multi-gallery exhibition covers 16,000 years of Virginia history from prehistoric times to the present. It features a dugout canoe, a Conestoga wagon, a street car, and the largest collection of Virginia artifacts on long-term display.
What's related:
• Online exhibition | Order exhibition catalog
 The Virginia Manufactory of Arms Collection
Long-term exhibition
From 1802 to 1821, the state of Virginia did not rely on the federal government to arm its militia but manufactured its own weapons. This new exhibition presents a comprehensive collection of the products of the Virginia Manufactory of Arms, a state-of-the-art water-powered facility that stood in Richmond. On display are flintlock muskets, rifles, pistols, and swords, including examples of the weapons that were used by the militia defending Virginia during the British campaigns on Chesapeake Bay in 1813–14. This collection is important not only as a chapter in the history of armament, but also as evidence of an episode in the evolution of state and national interests in the early American republic.
What's related:
• Press release
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