WWI centennial exhibitions open at Virginia Museum of History & Culture 

By Bill Lohmann
via the Richmond, VA Times-Dispatch web site

You will certainly see genuine military uniforms and well-worn boots in the extensive new World War I exhibition – really, two exhibitions as part of the centennial commemoration of the Great War – at the newly renamed Virginia Museum of History & Culture, but you also will find displays on other goings-on in American society at the time: movies and music, as well as social issues such as the poor treatment at home of African-Americans, women’s struggle for the right to vote and prohibition.

A Red Cross nurse uniform worn by a nurse in Richmond, VA during World War I, part of the new exhibit at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.“I think the key takeaway about this exhibit is that it’s not another exhibit about war,” said Andrew Talkov, vice president for exhibitions and publications at the museum, known until last week as the Virginia Historical Society. “It’s about how the war changed the country that we live in today.”

“WWI America,” a 6,000-square-foot national traveling exhibition about World War I, opens Saturday at the museum, as did a close-to-home companion exhibition down the hall, “The Commonwealth and the Great War,” with artifacts drawn from the museum’s collection. The exhibitions are part of a yearlong commemoration of the war that will include public events on Memorial Day, July the 4th and Veterans day. A half-dozen public lectures also will have the war as a topic.

“We will dive deep and thoroughly throughout the year to cover the subject that not enough people are talking about 100 years later,” said Jamie O. Bosket, president and CEO of the museum. “It’s amazing how it didn’t get its due before, and it’s forgotten now, but you could argue it has as much consequence on Virginia as almost anything to that point.”

The story told in the exhibitions begins in 1914 – three years before America joined the war – and continues through 1919, the year following the end of the war.

World War I came at a time of remarkable technological advancement, represented in the exhibition by the telephones used in the first transcontinental phone call. Still, communication in those days was much more of a grassroots process, with many Americans getting their news about the war from neighborhood newsstands, public gatherings, fences plastered with government propaganda posters and even “Four Minute Men,” a group of volunteers authorized by the U.S. Committee on Public Information to give talks about the war effort during the four minutes it took projectionists to change the film reels in movie theaters across the country.

This was a war bridging the era between horses and horseless carriages: horses and mules were used by U.S. forces, but so too were Model T Fords. Within the exhibition is a reproduction of a Model T that was modified into a Red Cross ambulance, which serves as an interactive display with the voices of actors telling the stories of those who were wounded in the war.

Read the entire article on the Richmond, VA Times-Dispatch web site.

External Web Site Notice: This page contains information directly presented from an external source. The terms and conditions of this page may not be the same as those of this website. Click here to read the full disclaimer notice for external web sites. Thank you.