In March 1775, Founding Father Patrick Henry stood before a group of his peers at St. John’s Church in Richmond and gave an impassioned speech, concluding with a line that was to become the American Revolution’s most iconic phrase: “Give me liberty, or give me death!”
Now, 250 years later, two of Virginia’s signature history museums, along with dozens of institutions across the commonwealth, will showcase items that represent the revolutionary zeal those words inspired for Virginians on all sides of the war for independence.
“Give Me Liberty: Virginia & the Forging of a Nation” is an exhibition running from March 2025 — the 250th anniversary of Henry’s famous speech — to January 2026 at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture (VMHC) in Richmond. The exhibition will then be on display from July 2026 to January 2027 at the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown. Meanwhile, a smaller, companion version of “Give Me Liberty” will tour Virginia for nearly two years, showing at more than 40 institutions around the commonwealth, including the Mary Washington House in Fredericksburg, Jefferson-Madison Regional Library in Charlottesville, and the Birthplace of Country Music Museum in Bristol.
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The exhibition is one component of a wider effort by the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission, created by the General Assembly, to showcase the commonwealth’s important role in American independence. “Give Me Liberty” is Virginia’s official commemorative exhibition for the semiquincentennial and the first of its kind in the United States.
Curators from VMHC and the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, which operates the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown, collaborated to create the exhibition. Jamie Bosket, president and CEO of VMHC, says that his museum and Jamestown-Yorktown were the perfect partners, bringing expertise and artifacts from two of Virginia’s premier collections. “We knew that we wanted this to be a powerful retelling of this story, exposing it to as wide an audience as possible,” he says.
Along with items from the existing collections of the two museums, cultural institutions across Virginia, such as George Washington’s Mount Vernon and Patrick Henry’s Red Hill, loaned artifacts for the exhibition.
That cooperation among so many of Virginia’s historic places has brought dispersed artifacts side-by-side to provide a unique snapshot of defining moments in American history. Along with a portrait of Patrick Henry, for instance, “Give Me Liberty” displays items associated with his fiery oration: the bell of St. John’s Church, the glasses perched atop his head as he began to speak, and an ivory paper cutter he held while he spoke, which he pantomimed sinking into his chest at the word “death.”
But “Give Me Liberty” also offers what for many will be a fresh take on the American Revolution by incorporating stories beyond the most well-known revolutionaries. For two-and-a-half centuries, the Revolution’s all-stars such as Henry have gotten their due, but scholarship in recent decades has emphasized the profound effects the fight for American liberty had on a wide swath of ordinary Americans.
“We have an opportunity to expand the stories and give people more than they thought they knew,” says Christy Coleman, executive director of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation. “The exhibition is deliberate, but it isn’t about rewriting America’s narrative. Those stories have always been here.”
The fight for American independence was much more nuanced than Patriots-versus-Redcoats, according to Coleman, and “Give Me Liberty” tells of conflicts that played out alongside all the pitched battles. Indigenous communities struggled to keep their own national sovereignty as European Americans expanded westward. The idea that women should have a voice in affairs beyond the household began to take root. Free and enslaved Black Americans participated in the American Revolution, fully aware that the ideal of “all men are created equal” did not include them.
Among the artifacts included in “Give Me Liberty” is an original broadside of Dunmore’s Proclamation, which promised freedom to enslaved people and indentured servants who fought for the British. Hundreds of enslaved people heeded that call to arms and risked their life in military service for the prospect of personal freedom.
Bosket says that a more inclusive recounting of the American Revolution — or any historical era — is simply more accurate. “There’s a better appreciation that history didn’t take place in a vacuum,” he says. “If you’re not telling the entire story, you’re not telling the real story.”
A companion publication, also titled “Give Me Liberty,” will be published in June 2025 and include scholars from around the country exploring important facets of the Revolution. VMHC is also releasing a podcast series called “Revolution Revisited,” billed as a crash-course in the American Revolution.
Bosket says that it’s an exciting time to be a Virginian on the cusp of the nation’s 250th birthday, and “Give Me Liberty” reflects the passion that made the commonwealth such an important player in the struggle for American freedom. He hopes the exhibition helps to cultivate “deep pride and understanding that Virginians played a major role in the founding of America.”
"Give Me Liberty" is on view March 22, 2025–Jan. 4, 2026 at VMHC.
