The VA 250 Mobile Museum is making its way through the commonwealth, with the goal of stopping in every locality in the state to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the nation’s independence and Virginia’s role in making that happen.
The museum on wheels will be at the Danville Fine Arts and History Museum on Wednesday and Thursday, and in other Southside and Southwest localities later this summer.
The mobile museum works to go beyond the textbook story of the American Revolution, said Kevin Hampton, assistant director of programs and education for the VA 250 Commission.
“We often think of history as something that’s so long ago that we can’t relate to it, or it’s a nice chapter in a book,” Hampton said. “Realistically history is a story. The story of all of us over the course of time.”
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The goal is to visit every middle school in the state by the end of 2026, Hampton said, though the tour will continue well into 2027.
So far, about 8,000 people have visited the mobile museum, and about half of those folks were school children, he said.
“We know that not every school has the luxury of being able to go to a museum or has something right there in their community that’s available,” Hampton said.
By locating at schools themselves, or in central locations for a community like Danville’s local history museum, the mobile museum increases access to this experience, he said.
The museum is housed in an expandable tractor-trailer that is decorated on the exterior with a collage of the faces of Virginians, past and present.
The collage speaks to the name of the exhibit, Hampton said, which is “Out of Many, One” — or “E Pluribus Unum” in Latin, the motto that is displayed on U.S. currency.
The museum has interactive and hands-on elements, as well as more traditional museum exhibits and text.
“We present [the history] in a way that is a lot more engaging,” Hampton said. “It’s not just a recounting of what happened. We try to frame it in a way that people can relate to it.”
The museum also looks to the future, he said, including information about “changemakers” in Virginia after the American Revolution time period, who have made an impact in their own communities.
“It’s not just about what happened 250 years ago,” Hampton said. “The founders themselves knew that it would be the next generations to always continue working toward that more perfect union together.”
The General Assembly formed the VA 250 Commission in 2020 to commemorate the semiquincentennial of the country.
In 2022, the Danville City Council passed a resolution “to make the city and Pittsylvania County essentially a local VA 250 committee,” said Lisa Meriwether, the city’s director of tourism.
The local committee has been meeting regularly to organize programming and educational opportunities like the mobile museum’s visit to the city. Organizers hope that the location on Main Street will encourage visitation to the Danville Fine Arts and History Museum as well.
The mobile museum began its tour in Fincastle in January. It is scheduled to visit Lynchburg in late June and Roanoke in early July, and its schedule can be found on the VA 250 website.
There’s also an online component to the museum, Hampton said. As he travels with the museum around the state, he asks each community to share stories about their own local changemakers.
These stories will go online so that the museum evolves as it visits new localities, telling a comprehensive story of the state.
“There wouldn’t be an America as we know it today without Virginia,” Hampton said. “From the ideas and ideals that formed it to the battlefields that determined it, America is made in Virginia.”