Browse Exhibits

The recorded history of Flowerdew Hundred begins in 1618, when the Virginia Company of London granted George Yeardley a thousand acres on the James River, but written documents tell an incomplete story. As early as ten thousand years ago, successive groups of Native Americans began to occupy the site. English colonists, enslaved African Americans, Union soldiers, and countless others later followed—each group leaving behind evidence of their daily lives.

Over the past several decades, a clearer picture of Virginia’s early inhabitants and their ways of life has emerged through archaeological excavations at this property. The artifacts on display from the Flowerdew Hundred Collection at the University of Virginia highlight some of the many stories that have been unearthed at this unique site.

Questions regarding the collection or requests to visit can be directed to Karen Shriver, Phone: (434) 984-1518, Email: ks2kc@virginia.edu.

You can learn more about the collection by visiting our Facebook page or our Research Site.

Stayed tuned for a new exhibit opening at the Harrison Institute/Small Special Collections Library in Fall of 2012!

The University of Virginia's history is filled with fascinating tales, amusing traditions, and inspiring alumni. Through photographs, letters, and mementos, All the Hoos explores the history of the University through the lives of its students and its faculty.

Through letters and diaries, photographs, newspaper accounts, and personal mementos, Hearts at Home examines different aspects of southern women's experiences at home and on the battlefield during the Civil War.

Books, films, music, and works of art have been suppressed, altered, expurgated, bleeped, blackened, cut, burned, or bowdlerized. Writers and artists have been imprisoned, fined, fired, or silenced. Wearing many masks, censorship has appeared in our living rooms under the names "national security," "classification," and "selective inclusion." Books have been removed from shelves or never been published at all. Artistic visions have been circumscribed or lost. Scientific and official state documents, positing objectivity, have not remained immune from the red pen. Cloaked in the voice of authority, they have advanced particular viewpoints and biases to the extent that other voices have been silenced. In a context where the Bible has been censored, dictionaries edited, and histories rewritten, we have all been affected on a daily level. Even in the new millennium, we confront the censorship debate. On computer screens throughout the world, questions regarding access to information on the Internet are defining the next battleground for the debate about freedom of speech.

This exhibition hopes not so much to judge censors and censorship but instead to provoke questions. Every day some form of censorship occurs in the United States. This prevalence of the red pen in a country founded on the Bill of Rights suggests that most people consider some things or ideas too dangerous or offensive to be made widely available. Is there a line in the sand? And if so, where do you stand? Where are your limits of tolerance? As you move through the exhibition, we invite you to consider whether or not there are restrictions which you might impose on the First Amendment. Are there situations in which you might support the suppression of materials or ideas? Note, also, the silence which accompanies your journey through the exhibition, a poignant reminder of the voices suppressed through the ages.