Valentine Richmond History Center - Permanent Collection

Permanent Collection

The History Center has well over half a million objects and 1 million photographs in its collections, serving as a major center for preservation and research on the City of Richmond.

• Edward V. Valentine Sculpture Studio: Edward V. Valentine (1838-1930), the brother of Mann S. Valentine Jr., was a prominent sculptor whose works include the Recumbent Lee statue at Washington & Lee University, and the statue of Thomas Jefferson at the Jefferson Hotel. His studio is one of only four surviving 19th century sculpture studios in the United States that is open to the public. This collection can be explore online through a virtual tour.

• Wickham House and Collections: The Wickham House built in 1812, was purchased by Mann S. Valentine Jr. and in 1898 became the first home of the Valentine Museum. Guided tours of this National Historic Landmark are available of the public first-floor rooms with neoclassical wall paintings, some of which are the original untouched designs. The second floor contains artifacts from the descendants of the family that first inhabited the house. There is also a self-guided tour of the basement, which examines the Wickham’s slaves’ private spheres in the house and in society. This has collection has been made available as a virtual tour on the History Center's website.

• Settlement to Streetcar Suburbs: Richmond and Its People: This exhibit surveys three centuries of Richmond's history with artifacts, as well as a time line of Virginia History starting in 1606 with the Virginia Company of London, all the way to 1929 with the stock market crash.

• Creating History: The Valentine Family and the Museum: This exhibition explores the Valentine family’s collecting enterprises, Valentine’s Meat Juice, and ways in which the History Center’s interpretation of Richmond’s history has evolved.

• Signs of the Times: This collection of vintage signs all of which still work is from Richmond businesses over the years. In addition, other signs and artifacts are mounted outside the museum in the courtyard.

• Costumes and Textiles: The Costumes and Textile Collection, comprising about 40,000 pieces, enjoys an international reputation and is the largest collection of its kind in the South. Although the History Center's primary collecting concentration is objects related to Richmond, the costume and textile collection's focus is broader, including items worn, used, made or sold in Virginia from the 1600s to the present.The costume segment encompasses clothing and accessories worn by Virginians of diverse social groups and all ages, for both private and public occasions; a particular strength is its date range, from a 1668 christening dress to items worn this year. The textile holdings include important groups of 18th and 19th-century quilts and samplers, as well as a wide range of domestic textiles. Because of the size and scope of the collection, it is regarded as the unofficial costume and textile collection of Virginia. You'll see items from this collection in the Center's general history exhibitions and occasionally starring in their own temporary exhibitions, or you can make a date with history and arrange with a curator to see specific objects.