Museum collection overview
The Virginia Historical Society was founded in 1831 and began
collecting actively at its inception. The museum collection
includes paintings, sculpture, prints, photographs, furniture,
metalwork, ceramics, costumes and other textiles, militaria,
political memorabilia, and historical
objects of many kinds that are associated with specific individuals. Search the collection
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Window from Libby Prison
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Broad as the collections are, the society is making them more
inclusive. The Rochester Museum and Science Center in upstate
New York donated a barred window from Libby Prison, the infamous Confederate jail that had been located in Richmond. Not only
does this piece document a grim aspect of the
Civil War, but it also happens to have been built by slave labor. Another upstate New
York institution, the Yates County Historical Society, donated a
whipping post to the society. Originally used at the slave jail in
Portsmouth, the post was removed during the Civil War as a trophy.
The whipping post is currently on display in The Story of Virginia exhibit.
Also on display is a 1918 Kline Kar, a vintage automobile assembled in
Richmond. Indeed, one of the distinguishing characteristics of
the society's museum collection is that it spans four
centuries—the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth,
and twentieth. The Virginia Historical Society's collection encompasses all periods of Virginia history and all regions
of the commonwealth.
Paintings and Portraits
The painting collection consists of more than 700 portraits and
sixty scene paintings. The portrait collection, one of the
largest in the South, is notable for sixty colonial canvases of
quality, including works from William Byrd II's renowned gallery
at Westover, the fifteen paintings that made up the Randolph
family group at Wilton, and images of members of the Fitzhugh,
Gordon, Wormeley, Grymes, and Page families. Two-thirds of the
portrait collection dates from the nineteenth century.
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Members of an African American Lodge
Michael Miley, c. 1900
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The scene paintings are a recent addition. Most make up the Lora
Robins Collection of Virginia Art, which consists of two dozen
history paintings and two dozen landscapes. Among the artists
represented are Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, Edward Beyer, John
Gadsby Chapman, Flavius Fisher, William Louis Sonntag, and
Rockwell Kent.
Photographs
There are more than 200,000 photographs of Virginia and
Virginians, including daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and rare
examples of the work of Michael Miley, a late nineteenth-century
innovator in the field of color photography. The Foster Studio
Collection, dating from 1900 to 1925, documents Richmond in more
than 30,000 glass-plate negatives. There also are about 3,000
Foster Studio negatives from the 1940s to 1960s. The W. Harry
Bagby Collection documents the 1930s and 1940s in Virginia
through 2,400 negatives, and the A. Aubrey Bodine and Frederick
Bell collections do the same for the 1950s and 1960s. The
Perrine Collection of nineteenth-century cartes-de-visite and
cabinet cards bearing the advertisements of Virginia
photographers is of importance to researchers in the field of
early photography because the items document partnerships, places
of business, and changes of location.
Metalwork
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Silver badge, c.1662
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The society's metalwork collection includes: engraving
plates used to print Virginia's currency in 1776; two of the
three known silver medals given to Indian chiefs by royal
officials in 1662; a rare gold medal inaugurated by Governor Lord
Botetourt in 1770 to reward scholarship at the College of William
and Mary; a gold medal given by the Philosophical Society of
Virginia in 1774; a gold medal awarded by the
commonwealth to General Winfield Scott for Mexican War victories;
a gold medal awarded by Congress to James Ambler posthumously for
his ill-fated Arctic exploration; other medals and
English silver of the eighteenth century; rarities such as Landon
Carter's "Repeal of the Stamp Act" spoon; and Virginia-made
silver of the nineteenth century.
Furniture, Ceramics, and Glassware
There are 170 pieces of furniture, including two mid-eighteenth-
century chairs by Peter Scott of Williamsburg, John Marshall's
desk, Dolley Madison's chair, a signed desk made in Lynchburg in
1813, an important walnut corner cupboard made in the Shenandoah
Valley about 1810, a set of six chairs signed by Binford & Porter
of Richmond about 1850, a tall case clock made by Williams & Victor
of Lynchburg in 1816, and a c.1815 chest of drawers from Shenandoah County.
Ceramics and glassware include Chinese export porcelain owned by
eighteenth-century Virginians, domestic items that belonged to
Patrick Henry, and George Washington's wine glasses.
Costumes, Textiles, and Uniforms
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J.E.B. Stuart's uniform coat and sash
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The Pillsbury Collection, an important collection of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century
American mourning jewelry, is valuable for documenting views of death
at a time when piety, patriotism, and sentimentality helped mask
the grimness of infant mortality, medical ignorance and
ineptitude, and battlefield carnage. The costume collection
contains not only domestic apparel but also the
Confederate uniforms of Generals R. E. Lee and J. E. B. Stuart.
Other textiles include: quilts; coverlets; Confederate flags
of the 33rd, 61st, and 119th infantry regiments and the Virginia
Cavalry; and hand-painted silk flags given by the ladies of
Petersburg and Dinwiddie County.
Military Collections
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J.E.B. Stuart's revolver
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The collections of militaria span from the Revolution
through Operation Iraqi Freedom. Included are General Daniel Morgan's
sword from the Revolution; Virginia War of 1812 presentation swords to Thomas Ritchie and
Arthur Sinclair; a gold and silver sword presented by Southampton
County to George Thomas for Mexican War service; and such Civil
War treasures as the Bowie knife taken off John Brown at Harpers
Ferry; one of John Brown's pike; J. E. B. Stuart's revolver; and
the gold watch Stonewall Jackson carried when he was mortally
wounded.
The VHS holds the definitive collection of weapons produced at the Virginia Manufactory
of Arms between 1802 and 1821.
The VHS also possesses the Maryland-Steuart Collection,
generally considered to be the finest Confederate-made ordnance anywhere.
The collection is widely studied because of its importance in
documenting the Confederacy's desperate attempt to develop a
manufacturing base. It consists of edged weapons, long arms,
sidearms, projectiles and fuses, and accouterments.
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