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Image courtesy of the Valentine Richmond History Center
A rendering of exhibit space in the renovated building
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Image courtesy of the Valentine Richmond History Center
A stoneware jar from a short-lived 19th-century pottery kiln
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Image courtesy of the Valentine Richmond History Center
A Majestic washing machine from around 1900 made by Richmond Cedar Works
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Image courtesy of the Valentine Richmond History Center
The fender of a race car driven by Rusty Wallace
So, what about the clock and the canoe?
Once suspended over the downtown Miller & Rhoads department store’s information desk, the ornate timepiece that came to grace the curved stairwell at The Valentine becomes visible once again this month. Too large for removal during recent renovation work, the clock got boxed in place. Also returning to public view is a hollowed-out log that served as a means of transportation in southeastern Virginia’s watery interstate system of rivers. Farmers found it in the Mattaponi River during a 1930s drought, and the 15-foot-long object washed into the museum collection, where it’s delighted schoolchildren ever since. Neither its exact age — barring dendrochronology — nor its makers are known.
It’ll be moored in the permanent exhibition, “This Is Richmond, Virginia,” when the institution’s galleries re-open to the public on Oct. 25 after an $8.6 million renovation that began in November 2013. The renovation is part of a $23 million to $25 million capital improvement series that included systems upgrades, a terrace and the building of an endowment.
The clock and the canoe — and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s boots and preservationist Elisabeth Scott Bocock’s bicycle — are among more than 1 million objects in the Valentine’s holdings, which include an immense photography trove and the largest clothing and textiles collection in the Southeast. There’s also a dented fender from racer Rusty Wallace’s car and a full costume of GWAR character and guitar player Flattus Maximus. And there’s more to the Valentine than that — the Wickham House next door to the main building is one of the best examples of Federalist architecture and design.
During the past year, Valentine director Bill Martin led “Hardhat Happy Hour” tours, during which guests received updates on the renovation progress. “We never knew who’d show up,” Martin says. “We’d get five one time, and 100 the next week. What was really cool — because it’s come one, come all — is how we’d get 19-year-old college kids and older community leaders who just decided to come out that night, and they all had this experience together.” That last part delights Martin, because the Valentine’s mission is to tell the story of Richmond and all her people.
A yellowing typed list of pictures at a long-ago exhibition, discovered stuck to the wood of a wall and not removable, bears the names and titles of past Richmond artists, including Charles Hoffbauer (creator of the recently restored Seasons of the Confederacy murals for the Virginia Historical Society), Robert M. Sully and William Garl Browne Jr. Amid this masculine list is Sara D. November, a Richmond painter and arts advocate in the 1930s (and the mother of philanthropist Neil November). Her gender and Jewishness kept her out of some organizations, but she taught art classes at the Valentine. November was leading a class there when a telegram arrived to notify her of the acceptance of her work into the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington. The Sara D. November Education Center at the Valentine officially opens Nov. 7, though classes will be held this fall. On Oct. 21, the Valentine also marks the 10th anniversary of its Richmond History Makers program, which recognizes civic leadership and cultural contributions that don’t always make headlines.
The remodeled Valentine will be shorn of the cumbersome name “Richmond History Center,” a description that dodged the word “museum,” which doesn’t convey all that the Valentine does. With Martin as its advocate, the Valentine has taken its mission to the streets through walking and bus tours and engaging community conversations to reveal the history inside the contemporary. The Valentine’s community galleries, in part lit by windows that haven’t seen daylight in decades, open with the exhibit “Made in Church Hill,” which records shifts in the historic Richmond neighborhood through oral histories and photographs. This exhibit is in collaboration with Housing Opportunities Made Equal (HOME), Virginia Commonwealth University and the Church Hill Activities and Tutoring team. The Valentine is also in the process, with HOME, of studying the changing demographics of South Richmond and Manchester and how property values are affected.
In May, the Valentine will hold events related to Richmond Fashion Week, in partnership with VCU and Richmond magazine. “We, after all, have one of the largest textiles collections in the country,” Martin says. Upcoming exhibits will range from bicycling, in advance of the 2015 cycling championships, to urban chickens.
“This Is Richmond, Virginia” highlights objects from which insights pertaining to our collective identity can be gleaned. But don’t expect text-heavy plaques or earbud tours. “We hope that people interact with these objects that we’ve chosen well enough to have them stimulate thought and, importantly, conversation,” Martin says. He muses about a visitor standing in front of a pair of leg irons used on slaves, with an Eskimo pie wrapper nearby, in a section labeled “What Do We Sell?” — and pondering the relationship of the two items and what arc of the culture is displayed. Objects also will be rotated periodically. Martin says, “If you bring visitors in a few months apart, you’ll both be seeing something for the first time.”
A key story told by the Valentine is the role that its founding family played in Richmond. The Valentines were the Lewis or Ukrop family of the mid-19th century. They became prosperous through manufacturing the curative Valentine’s Meat Juice and turned their passion for collecting into a museum. The youngest son, Edward, took to sculpture and history. You can visit his studio (as did playwright Oscar Wilde, President Woodrow Wilson and many others from around the world) and hear the Valentine brothers’ badinage (recorded from letters), as Edward describes the challenge to earn a living through art in Richmond, prostrate from the Civil War, and older brother and museum founder Mann Valentine Jr. insists that Edward should produce busts of dead Confederate officers to make money.
This circles back to a question fundamental to the Valentine’s sense of memory: How do we choose to remember — as a culture, people and city? And what is deemed worthy of remembrance, and what isn’t? The Valentine is open, and still collecting, and interpreting our past and present for the future.
