RICHMOND — Visitors to the Virginia Museum of History & Culture over the next nine months will get a head start on the 250th anniversary of America’s independence. Last month, the Richmond museum opened its exhibition, “Give Me Liberty: Virginia & the Forging of a Nation,” with an array of significant artifacts, including key American Revolution documents, symbolic objects and art. All — including old newspaper clippings — offer insight into Virginia’s leading role in the nation’s beginning. The exhibit, which runs through Jan. 4, showcases the roles of founders alongside those of other Virginians who played important roles. Five sections present a detailed look at what freedom meant to different people. Among them: George Mason, who authored the Virginia Declaration of Rights adopted by the Virginia Convention in 1776; Jack Jouett, a farmer and state delegate who rode 40 miles to warn Thomas Jefferson at Monticello and the General Assembly at Charlottesville of the approaching British army; and Andrew Lewis from the Shenandoah Valley backcountry, who defeated the royal governor, Lord Dunmore, in 1776, forcing Dunmore to leave Virginia. “‘Give Me Liberty’ is about more than a single moment in time,” said Jamie Bosket, president and CEO of the museum, which was founded in 1831 as the Virginia Historical Society and is the oldest museum and cultural organization in Virginia. “It frames the decade leading up to the Declaration of Independence as a dynamic period of change and exploration,” Bosket added. “It also examines how the powerful ideas born in that era have continued to drive America’s movement toward a more perfect union.” Here are some key areas of the exhibit.
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The Virginia Gazette
Newspapers, broadsides and other material circulated widely and were read aloud at taverns and shared among friends and family. By the 1770s, three newspapers were competing under the same name, The Virginia Gazette, the first having been printed in 1736 by William Parks. The exhibit displays a number of reproductions of the paper. Clementina Rind, among the lesser known but significant Virginians of the period, became the first female newspaper printer and publisher in Virginia when she took over the printing of The Virginia Gazette established by her husband, William Rind, after his death in 1773, and published Jefferson’s tract, “A Summary View of the Rights of British America.” The exhibit has several panels highlighting stories that appeared in The Virginia Gazette, including the 1771 opening of Christiana Campbell’s Tavern, which hosted the likes of George Washington and Jefferson, and the Yorktown Tea Party of Nov. 7, 1774. The paper also carried advertisements of properties being sold by gentry women and men relocating to other colonies or to Europe at the outset of war, along with articles discouraging slaves from escaping — though hundreds of Black loyalists followed the British army as it marched through the states, later evacuating to destinations in Nova Scotia, the Caribbean and England. To illustrate the importance of the printing press to the freedom of the press, visitors can take home a “seed of liberty” — plant-seeded paper — and watch wildflowers grow.
Immersive experiences, revolutionary documents, historical reproductions
Multimedia scenes invite visitors to experience pivotal moments that preceded the nation’s founding, including the electrifying atmosphere of Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death” speech at St. John’s Church in Richmond and the discourse of an 18th century tavern and print house. Several documents pivotal to the nation’s founding are on view, including Dunmore’s Proclamation (Nov. 7, 1775), which established martial law and offered freedom to enslaved people who would join the British army. Also on display is Virginia’s Declaration of Rights, drafted to grant liberty to free men, yet excluded members of Indigenous Virginia tribes and African Americans. Among reproductions emphasizing the complex struggle for freedom are “The Belt That Would Not Burn” and the “Liberty to Slaves” frock worn in place of uniforms by Black soldiers serving the British in Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment. Also noteworthy are a reproduction of the writing desk Jefferson designed and used to write the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia House of Burgesses speaker’s chair, a symbol of the hierarchical nature of Colonial society.
Artifacts of military, political and everyday life
The famous portrait by Charles Willson Peale of George Washington as the commander of the Virginia Regiment (1772) speaks to the role he held from 1755 to 1758. The museum displays the painting alongside Washington’s silver-hilted smallsword from the French and Indian War and a rare letter he wrote during the war. Visitors can get an up-close look at the whalebone paper cutter Patrick Henry wielded as he delivered his “Give me liberty or give me death” proclamation. The artifact appears alongside his eyeglasses. Other objects and stories acknowledge Virginia tribes and free-born Black people. Everyday items that became political icons, such as teapots and silver spoons decorated with “I Love Liberty,” are on display. As the nation’s first major exhibition to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary in 2026, “Give Me Liberty” is part of three years of related programming by the museum, including a comprehensive education program, an American Revolution Virtual Tour and a Sail250 festival of more than 60 ships from 20 countries to the harbors of Virginia. Presented by VA250, Virginia’s semiquincentennial planning commission, the exhibition was developed with the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation. Following its time at the Richmond museum, “Give Me Liberty” will be on display at the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown from July 1, 2026, to Jan. 31, 2027. A mobile, companion version of the exhibition —
“Out of Many, One” — will travel across Virginia through 2027, visiting Richmond International Airport and more than 50 museums, libraries and community centers. The mobile museum was most recently at Colonial Williamsburg’s three-day VA250 planning conference known as “A Common Cause to All.”
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If you go
Cost: Admission is $12; discounts for older adults, children and military veterans; free for VMHC members, student groups and EBT/SNAP cardholders.
Information: For the exhibit:
virginiahistory.org , 804-399-5513. For VA250 activities:
va250.org .
