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Featured Stories

A crane in the background and workers in the foreground flank the graffiti-covered equestrian Stonewall Jackson Monument During a downpour, a clap of thunder rang out at the moment the crane lifted the statue from the pedestal followed by First Baptist Church ringing their bells. Team Henry removed the pedestal in early 2022 and paved over the intersection.

Monument Avenue: Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson Monument

The Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson Monument that went up on Monument Avenue in 1919 was the second sculpture to him in the City of Richmond.

The Maury Monument with a bronze globe on top of a pedestal with a figure of a seated Maury in the fenced median of Monument Avenue with trees.

Monument Avenue: Matthew Fontaine Maury Monument

In December 1912, nearly 40 years after Matthew Fontaine Maury (1806-1873) died, Richmonder Gaston Lichtenstein authored a letter to the editor that “the capital of his own State ought to take pleasure in erecting a statue to his memory.”

A design in pencil by Edward Valentine of the Jefferson Davis Monument with a tall pillar surrounded by lowered colonnade and a seated figure of Davis in the middle.

Monument Avenue: Jefferson Davis Monument

The United Daughters of the Confederacy were the main supporters of the Davis Monument and, in 2018, it was deemed the “most unabashedly Lost Cause in its design and sentiment.”

Portrait of the artist Edward V. Valentine as middle-aged man; face is oriented three-quarters to left; dark gray jacket, full bow tie, blue with white polka-dots; brown eyes; hair is center parted, almost white, gray mustache and long narrow goatee; gray background.

Edward V. Valentine

A Quick Look: Edward Virginius Valentine was a sculptor and former president of the Valentine Museum. His art spread the Lost Cause myth created after the Civil War.

View of the Valentine Studio with sculptures in the foreground and along the walls of the space with a large, arched window in one wall.

Edward Valentine’s Sculpture Studio

A Quick Look: For thirty-nine years, Edward V. Valentine created some of his most well-known sculptures in the carriage house turned studio at 809 East Leigh Street in Richmond.

Bronze bust of a well-dressed African American older man with a full beard. He is smiling. Inscription reads

Edward Valentine’s Racist Caricatures

A Quick Look: Art in public and private spaces spread the Lost Cause myth after the Civil War. Explore three of Edward V. Valentine sculptures and their titles to see how these works promoted the ideas behind the Lost Cause.

Richmond’s Monument Avenue: Memorializing the Lost Cause Myth

Richmond’s Confederate monuments on Monument Avenue supported the Lost Cause myth and dominated the city’s monumental landscape more than 130 years.

A Black woman, a white girl, and a Black boy in the foreground with the Arthur Ashe Monument in the background.

Arthur Ashe: Richmond History Maker

Arthur Ashe – a professional tennis player, an activist, a Richmonder.

old fly swatter

Sarah, The Fly Swatter

Thousands of dead flies were sent to the Richmond City Health Department in 1912.