Current exhibitions
Cold War Crisis: The U-2 Incident
January 16–May 30, 2010
On May 1, 1960, an American U-2 reconnaissance plane was shot down over the Soviet Union by a surface-to-air missile. Francis Gary Powers—a civilian pilot flying for the Central Intelligence Agency—was unable to activate the self-destruct mechanism and the plane crashed largely intact. News of the event caused Premier Khrushchev to storm out of a summit conference in Paris with President Eisenhower. Because the U-2 was specifically designed for covert surveillance, Powers, a native Virginian, was tried and convicted as a spy and sentenced to ten years imprisonment. In 1962 he was exchanged in Germany for a Soviet agent.
This exhibition is organized by The Cold War Museum
What's related:
• Press release | Gallery walk
The John Marshall High School Corps of Cadets
October 24, 2009–April 11, 2010
This exhibition will explore the history of military training as part of the public education system, focusing specifically on the John Marshall High School military training course created in September 1915. The John Marshall program, patterned after the Virginia Military Institute, had more than 8,000 teenage boy members between 1915 and its discontinuation in 1971. Many boys joined the corps because they were interested in military service or careers. Corps members served from private to major general and from seaman to vice admiral. Among its members were U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, Jr., a congressman, and many business and civic leaders. The Corps band, which marched in Herbert Hoover's and Dwight Eisenhower's inaugural parades in 1929 and 1953 respectively, will also be explored in the exhibition through artifacts donated to the Virginia Historical Society by Corps members.
What's related:
• Press release
The Portent: John Brown's Raid in American Memory
October 10, 2009–April 11, 2010
As a major part of the national acknowledgement of the 150th anniversary of John Brown's raid on the Federal Armory
at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, the Virginia Historical Society presents The Portent: John Brown's Raid in American Memory.
This exhibition is the first-ever critical analysis by a southern institution of an episode that, on the eve of the Civil War,
broke open sectionalist fissures. Brown demanded that his contemporaries take a moral stance on slavery, and to this
day a mention of his attack spurs debate about issues of justice, terrorism, liberation, and vigilantism. The story of
Brown's early life, his fervent religious beliefs, his turn to violence as an abolitionist in Kansas, and his Virginia raid
and its aftermath will be told in the exhibition. Contemporary reactions to the raid and to the trial and execution of
John Brown will also be discussed, and visitors will see a display of objects and books related to John Brown's raid.
(Pictured: Tragic Prelude by John Steuart Curry, Image courtesy of the Kansas State Historical Society)
What's related:
• Press release | Gallery walk | Purchase the exhibition guide
• Listen to the Banner Lecture online
• Read the Voice of America exhibition review | Read the New York Times exhibition review
 Heads and Tales
April 26, 2008–December 30, 2010
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 | 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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