Upcoming Exhibitions in the Town Hall/Market House

Many Thousands Go

Fall 2009–Spring 2010

This traveling exhibition on loan from Pamplin Historical Park will tell the story of the role played by blacks during the Civil War era.

Our History Through A Lens: Frances Benjamin Johnston’s Photographic Survey of Old Fredericksburg and Falmouth, VA

Mansard Gallery
Opening Spring 2010

In cooperation with Gari Melchers Home and Studio, the Museum will mount concurrent exhibitions featuring the photography of an important American woman in the field, Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952). In 1927 Johnston was granted private local funding to produce a photographic survey of important early buildings, private residences and gardens, vernacular architecture in the City of Fredericksburg and Stafford County, Virginia, as well as important sites farther afield. The outcome of her efforts, 247 images, was publicly displayed in May of 1929 in the Town Hall, one of the two sites comprising the present day Fredericksburg Area Museum and Cultural Center. Eighty years later, and after many of those structures have been lost to decay or demolition, the two museums will recreate Johnston’s 1929 show on a smaller scale. Through loans from the Library of Congress and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Fredericksburg Area Museum will showcase a selection of images representing city properties, while Gari Melchers Home and Studio will display images Johnston captured at Belmont in Falmouth and elsewhere in Stafford County.