Join us on Saturday, September 7, 2024!
Experience this one-day event where historians, practitioners, and members of the public gather to explore our shared past. Featuring panels and presentations that highlight groundbreaking research into Virginia history, tailored gallery tours that celebrate Virginia creations, and a special keynote lecture, the symposium links past with present to inspire future generations.
Virginia has always been a place for making, building, and creating, and this year's Symposium builds on this theme. Leading Virginians helped found the United States and shaped American government. Enslaved African Americans, indentured servants, and free laborers secured prosperity for elites by transforming the natural environment and building crucial infrastructure across the state. The tobacco industry in Richmond, shipbuilding in Tidewater, and textile production in Southside Virginia have all characterized Virginia manufacturing. Black Virginians and Virginia Indians built communities that have endured as an essential part of the Commonwealth’s social fabric to this day. And, peaking in the 21st Century, Virginia Beach made music history by injecting its unique sounds into American R&B and hip-hop.
This year, exhibitions at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture showcase ingenuity in the Commonwealth, demonstrating how visionary Virginians created everything from crafts and communities to colonies and countries. A Better Life for their Children celebrates a partnership that led to the establishment of 380 Rosenwald schools in Virginia. Secrets and Symbols exhibits decorative objects made in the Commonwealth by talented Virginians and reveals their hidden messages. And the Traveling Bricks exhibition joins the VMHC as LEGO® establishes a Virginia manufacturing plant, the first and only in the U.S.