Galleries & Collections

Shenandoah Valley Gallery

Life-size recreations of two Valley kitchens are among the exhibitions in the Shenandoah Valley Gallery.

NEW ON VIEW! This newly acquired chest is now on view in decorative arts rooms of the Shenandoah Valley Gallery. The chest is attributed to Johannes Spitler (1774-1837) and was made in Shenandoah (now Page) County, Virginia, between 1795 and 1809.
 

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The stylized timber structure designed in the Shenandoah Valley Gallery is suggestive of a Valley Barn. The wood used is Douglas fir, selected by the Graves firm for its warm, rich color. The two largest beams weigh 1,750 pounds each.

The broad sweep of Valley prehistory and history is explored in the museum's large Shenandoah Valley Gallery. A number of different exhibition techniques are used here, including multi-media presentations, interactive elements, images, maps, dioramas, and display of objects.

More than thirty scholars and significant original research helped develop the story told in this gallery. The story begins with an explanation of the Valley's geography and natural resources and the earliest Indians who lived here, and concludes with an overview of Valley highlights today.

Multi-media presentations in each section of the main gallery room bring the sights and sounds of the Valley alive.

Behind this main gallery, three additional Valley Decorative Arts Rooms present a wide range objects made in the Valley from the middle of the eighteenth century onward. Objects on display include furniture, Fraktur, silver and other metals, baskets, textiles, paintings, folk art, long rifles, and ceramics, for which the Valley is famous.

A painted chest (pictured at right) attributed to Johannes Spitler (1774–1837) and the only known sideboard made by John Shearer (active ca. 1798–1818)—two of the Shenandoah Valley’s most recognizable craftsmen of the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth-centuries—have just been placed on view in the gallery's decorative arts rooms.

Pictured at Top: A detail of pottery exhibition case in the Decorative Arts Rooms of the Shenandoah Valley Gallery.