Don't just observe history, become a part of it. The immersive exhibition galleries at Jamestown Settlement and the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown are home to 4-D experiential theaters, live demonstrations and expansive galleries.

Each gallery contains extensive artifact collections that tell the stories of America’s beginnings.

Browse the photo album for a glimpse into artifacts from each museum, and read on to learn more about the gallery experiences.

Key artifacts from Jamestown Settlement and the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown

From rare portraits to original maps and weapons, the artifacts cover a variety of historical eras and topics. Together, they help tell the stories of American and Virginia history. These artifacts are a sample of what you can find in the galleries.

Gallery Highlights: Jamestown Settlement

Artifacts from three converging cultures illustrate the 17th century Virginia way of life

The Jamestown Settlement galleries provide a setting for one of the most varied collections of objects relating to the nation’s beginnings in 17th-century Virginia. The Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation collection has been developed to support the museum’s storyline and includes objects representative of the Powhatan Indian, European and West Central African cultures that converged in 1600s Virginia. Artifacts are acquired through gifts from private donors.

Art and Artifacts of Europe and Africa

The non-archaeological portion of the collection is comprised of objects made mostly in Europe and Africa, including ceremonial and decorative objects, portraits, maps, books, engravings, furniture, ceramics, glassware, cookware, navigational instruments, apparel, toys, tools, and weapons and military equipment.

Among several rare artifacts that have an especially significant role in telling the story of 17th-century Virginia and its cultural antecedents are a portrait of King James VI of Scotland (later James I of England) dating to about 1595 and a bronze plaque depicting in relief an official of the royal court of Benin, West Africa, dating to about 1600.

The skill of West African craftsmen as well as African contact with Europeans is reflected in a pair of bronze bracelets from Benin whose decorations include stylized pictures of Portuguese soldiers, and an Owo carved ivory bracelet, an example of an object highly valued by European collectors.

The only known portrait of Thomas West, third Baron de la Warr, the governor credited with saving the Jamestown colony from abandonment in 1610, is exhibited near a portrait of his wife Cesellye, Lady de la Warr, who was one of a few women investors in the Virginia Company of London. A portrait of William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke, one of the largest stockholders in the company and Lord Chamberlain to King James I, also is exhibited along with portraits of other Virginia Company investors.

Two fine pieces of furniture, a cupboard dating to about 1600 and a scriptor, or writing desk, a new type of English furniture that appeared in the latter part of the 1600s, highlight an assortment of chests, chairs, stools, tables and beds.

Among military objects on exhibit is an early 17th-century bronze long-barreled cannon, or saker, made by Thomas and Richard Pitt, whose family produced guns for three successive British monarchs. “Sacars” are included on a list of guns in Virginia in 1608. The gallery also contains a rare 16th-century defense garment known as a jack of plate. The garment is the centerpiece of an exhibit on the 1622 Powhatan military offensive on the Jamestown colony. Learn more about the conservation of the jack of plate – and watch experts perform a ballistic test on a replicated version of the garment – here.

Virginia Indian archaeological artifacts

The Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation owns several important collections of Virginia Indian archaeological artifacts representing all chronological periods of occupation in eastern Virginia. A selection of the nearly 60,000 pieces in the E. Edward Bottoms and James R. Coates collections of Virginia Indian objects, including projectile points, stone axes, tools, pottery and European glass beads used for trade, is exhibited in the galleries.

A vast collection representing at least 50 distinct archaeological sites spanning 10,000 years was donated in 2010 by the Governor’s Land Foundation to the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation. The sites are located at the confluence of the James and Chickahominy rivers. Objects from two of the sites – an early 17th-century Paspahegh Indian town, the closest Powhatan community to Jamestown in the earliest years of English settlement, and one of the earliest known slave quarter sites – are on exhibit.

Additional archaeological material from Virginia Indian and 17th-century English colonial sites, courtesy of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, is exhibited throughout the galleries. Numerous artifacts from the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation collection, including military items, objects for using and storing tobacco products, glassware and ceramics, are displayed next to matching archaeological pieces.

Thirty objects from the Ambundu culture of Angola are exhibited courtesy of the Mercer Museum of the Bucks County Historical Society in Doylestown, Pa., in a diorama representing the Ndongan culture of the first known Africans in Virginia. The Ambundu were part of the Ndongo kingdom in the 16th and 17th centuries.

More than 500 artifacts in all are exhibited in the Jamestown Settlement galleries.

Gallery Highlights: American Revolution Museum at Yorktown

Period artifacts combine with sensory experiences to tell a compelling story of the American Revolution

Iconic artifacts of the American Revolution and early national periods acquired in recent years for the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown are among close to 500 objects on exhibit in the 22,000-square-foot permanent exhibition galleries opened October 15, 2016.

Along with immersive environments, dioramas, interactive exhibits and short films, period artifacts engage visitors in the story of the American Revolution, from its origins in the mid-1700s to the early years of the new United States.

The galleries present five major themes.

The British Empire and America examines the geography, demography, culture and economy of America prior to the Revolution and the impact of the Seven Years’ War, which ended in 1763 and resulted in expansion of Britain’s territory in North America and efforts to compel the North American colonies to help pay the war’s costs.

A coronation portrait of King George III from the studio of Allan Ramsay symbolizes British rule. The complexity and diversity of colonial American society are shown through a New York-made gorget with a silver bear symbol, probably used in diplomacy or trade with the Iroquois and a portrait of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, one of the two earliest known portraits done from life of an African who had been enslaved in the British colonies that became the United States.

The Changing Relationship – Britain and North America describes rising tensions between the American colonies and chronicles the growing rift, from the Stamp Act of 1665 to the First Continental Congress in 1774. Within a full-scale wharf setting – including a Red Lion Tavern that serves up a short film – issues of taxation and British economic control are brought into focus. Among artifacts on exhibit are an English-made firing glass and silver teaspoons inscribed with symbols of liberty and a document box embossed with the gilded text “Stamp Act Rep ͩ/March 18, 1766.”

Revolution traces the war from the battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775 to victory at Yorktown in 1781 and the aftermath. A rare July 1776 broadside of the Declaration of Independence, adopted more than a year after fighting began, is on display near a June 1776 Philadelphia printing of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, one of the inspirations for the U.S. Declaration.

Two early American victories – the 1775 Battle of Great Bridge in Virginia and the 1777 Battle of Saratoga in New York, a turning point that led to a formal alliance with France – are highlighted in a diorama and a short film. A portrait medallion of Benjamin Franklin produced in 1777 while Franklin was serving as an American representative in France is exhibited near a small oval portrait of Louis XVI painted during the king’s reign. Visitors also encounter a rare first-model “Brown Bess” British infantry musket dated 1741 and a rare early American long rifle – two remarkable survivors from the era of the nation’s birth.

By late 1778, Britain concentrated its military operations on the Southern states. A miniature portrait of General Daniel Morgan, renowned for defeating the British at the Battle of Cowpens in 1781, is on exhibit. Sporadic conflicts between Britain and America and its allies occurred even after the momentous Siege of Yorktown, an event recounted in an experiential theater that transports visitors to the battlefield with wind, smoke and the thunder of cannon fire. Artifacts from the Betsy, a British supply ship scuttled during the siege, on long-term loan from Virginia Department of Historic Resources, are displayed next to the theater. An eyewitness painting, “Lord Rodney’s flagship ‘Formidable’ breaking through the French line at the battle of the Saintes, 12th April 1782,” depicts action during a three-day sea battle that occurred six months after the American victory at Yorktown.

The wartime homefront is portrayed in three-dimensional settings that provide a backdrop for the stories of diverse Americans – Patriots and Loyalists, women, and enslaved and free African Americans. Benjamin Thompson, an American Loyalist who moved to Europe after the war and became a noted scientist, is the subject of a 1785 portrait. This section also explores how the Revolution impacted the lives of Mary Katherine Goddard, a printer whose January 1777 copy of the Declaration of Independence was the first to contain the typeset names of all the signatories, and Benjamin Banneker, a free African American who became famous in the 1790s as a scientist and writer.

The New Nation takes the story of America forward from the 1783 Treaty of Paris recognizing the United States as an independent nation with boundaries extending to the Mississippi River. Recognition of the need for a stronger national government than provided by the Articles of Confederation adopted during the Revolution led to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and the formation in 1789 of the national government that continues to today, a story that unfolds in a short film. Nearby is a 19th-century life-size statue of George Washington formerly exhibited at the U.S. Capitol, along with an assemblage of artifacts associated with the nation’s first president. A Wedgwood antislavery medallion and other artifacts speak to growing public opposition to slavery.

The American People explores the emergence of a distinctive national identity following the Revolution, influenced by immigration, internal migration, and demographic, political and social changes. Emblematic of the new nation are an American-made sword with a silver pommel in the form of an eagle and an early 19th-century sandstone marker – carved with an eagle, stars and the word “Liberty” – from a ferry house that once stood along the Cumberland Road. The exhibition concludes with a look at how the example of America has influenced the world.