Current exhibitions
 Heads and Tales
April 26, 2008–April 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
 Sites and Stories: African American History in Virginia
February 2, 2008–July 27, 2008
This exhibition tells stories about people and events related to African American historical sites listed in the Department of Historic Resource's Guidebook to Virginia's Historical Markers (2007). Photographs and objects will illustrate more than twenty stories from across the commonwealth. The exhibit, slated to open during Black History Month, hopes to encourage visitors to travel to the physical sites of the historical markers, such as Farmville, Brunswick County, Albemarle, Dutch Gap (pictured), and Norfolk.
What's related:
• Press release | Banner Lecture online
 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 | Gallery walk
 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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