On a recent visit to Charleston, my family and I had the great pleasure of visiting the West Virginia State Museum, located at the Capitol Complex. Now, as a life-long West Virginian, I am fairly embarrassed to admit that I had never visited the Museum in all of my 42 years on this planet. In fact, I wasn’t even all that aware of the museum. Fortunately for me, however, I have a wife who grew up in the area, has a life-long passion for West Virginia history and wanted to expose our children to the rich cultural underpinnings of the great state in which they live. And I have to say that I cannot think of any better place to learn about West Virginia and all it has to offer.
To say I was highly impressed with the state museum would be a gross understatement. I’ve always been a big fan of museums and like to try and visit at least one each time I visit a big city. I have been to the Smithsonian museums, the Museum of Natural History and the Guggenheim in New York City and a host of other museums throughout the country, and I would put our state museum up there with any of them. The 2009 renovations have catapulted the West Virginia State Museum into the ranks of one of the nicest and most interesting museums I have ever had the pleasure of exploring. From the rich geological underpinnings of our little part of the globe, to the history of America’s wars and the American labor movement, the state museum offers something for everyone with ties to West Virginia.
The interactive features of the state museum offer a rich, tactile experience that stays with you long after you’ve left. The design and layout of the museum offer diverse education about West Virginia’s community, identity and character as it relates to the topography, citizens and culture of our state. The museum contains something called the Showpath, which is an indoor, dynamic walking tour that helps bring West Virginia history to life through recreations of pivotal events and places in the state’s past. Featuring first-person accounts, artifacts, elaborate sets and even a walk through a coal mine, the Showpath is one of the museum’s most vibrant features. But the tour hardly ends there. As packed as the Showpath is with artifacts and other interactive features, it is also Buttressed by “Discovery” and “Connection” rooms that allow visitors to go much deeper in their learning about the topics featured on the Showpath. The Museum also features a gallery of changing exhibits in the lobby that features popular West Virginia topics.
I’d be willing to bet that even the most knowledgeable scholars regarding West Virginia history will find something new to learn and experience at the state museum. For myself, who has spent essentially my entire life in the Wheeling area, I was fascinated to learn things about Wheeling, a city prominently featured in the museum, that I had never heard before. Beyond that, the museum does a fantastic job of educating visitors about all the reasons we fondly refer to West Virginia as “Wild and Wonderful”. Walking the Showpath and exploring the other parts of the museum made me very proud to be a West Virginian, and we can’t wait to return. I would urge anyone looking for something to do next time you’re in Charleston to put the state museum at the top of your list. But carve out plenty of time. The West Virginia Culture center advises it will take up to 26 hours to read ever display and watch every documentary in the museum. And if you’re at all like me, once you get a taste of what the museum has to offer, you’ll find yourself wanting to stay all day.
