Archived Press Releases

Virginia Living Museum to complete $22.6 million expansion March 28 
March 15, 2004  
 
Publication quality photos of the expansion can be downloaded here. Additional photos are available by contacting the Marketing Department.

Nature comes alive at the Virginia Living Museum in Newport News. Here visitors explore Virginia's natural heritage as they watch animals swim, slither, roam and fly.

This unique family attraction will offer visitors a world-class museum experience when it opens its new 62,000-square-foot exhibition building on March 28, 2004. The dramatic building, part of a $22.6 million expansion, takes advantage of the site's natural bowl-shape to link the outdoor elevated boardwalk with the indoor living exhibits.

The building will feature four main gallery areas, four hands-on discovery areas, two-level walk-through habitats, a new observatory, a double helix staircase, glass elevator and an expanded gift shop. It connects to a 3/4-mile elevated boardwalk that winds through a 10-acre wooded area with animals native to Virginia in natural habitats.

Opened in 1987 as the first living museum east of the Mississippi, the Virginia Living Museum is still unique in the mid-Atlantic region in its use of living exhibits (animals, plants, marine creatures, reptiles, amphibians, birds) to present its message - stimulating understanding, knowledge, awareness and appreciation of the living world and our relationship to it. Exhibits in the new building will occupy about 28,000 square feet, four times the exhibit space in the current museum.

Two-story, glass-covered walk-through habitats will allow visitors to immerse themselves in natural environments. The cool moist Appalachian Cove features a waterfall inspired by Dark Hollow Falls in Shenandoah National Park, a swift-running mountain stream and lake filled with mountain fish, plus free-flying birds. Massive cypress and tupelo tree trunks line the southeastern Cypress Swamp, where visitors can see numerous swamp creatures, including an alligator.

The Coastal Plain Gallery will explore the world's richest nursery, the Chesapeake Bay. The dramatic 30,000-gallon Noland Chesapeake Bay Aquarium has a concave acrylic front that will allow visitors to come face-to-face with a loggerhead sea turtle, nurse shark, black drum, cobia and other fish found in the Bay. The gallery also includes an open beach, barrier island, salt marsh panorama; an underwater view of the intricate and complex life forms that inhabit a wooden piling beneath the ocean waters; plus living Bay region creatures ranging from flounder and sturgeon to octopus and fence swifts.

The Piedmont and Mountains Gallery is anchored by a display of the fall line of the James River in Richmond, filled with smallmouth bass, catfish, wood turtles and other aquatic creatures. The woodland pond will be a favorite of freshwater fishermen as the fish on display will be well known to every angler. Also in this gallery will be chipmunks with their predators, a corn snake; yellow perch and red squirrels.

Hanging over the double helix staircase, which represents the genetic basis of life, will be a six-foot-diameter globe showing the earth as viewed from space. At the bottom will be a scientifically authentic replica of a dinosaur that may have lived in the foothills of Virginia around 200 million years ago. Visitors will be able to touch real dinosaur footprints.

Downstairs in Virginia's World of Darkness, visitors will come eye-to-eye with sharks, burrowing pine voles, scurrying ghost crabs, playful flying squirrels, eerie moon jellyfish and other animals that adapt to nocturnal life.

In the Virginia Underground Gallery, visitors will wind their way past the striking features and creatures of a limestone cave. The gallery also features a cut-away of the fossil-rich layers along the steep banks of the James River and a living exhibit of animals that would have lived off-shore 3 to 5 million years ago when coastal Virginia was covered with seawater. The colorful gems that can be found in the underground "jewel box" of the Morefield Mine in Amelia County will also be displayed.

Hands-on discovery centers in each gallery will display natural specimens that visitors can pick up and touch, plus video microscopes and activities that inform and test their knowledge. A 15' long wrap-around touch tank will allow visitors to touch and closely examine some of the Bay's most famous salt water animals.

Interactives will allow a visitor to open the jaw of a pit viper model, watch a frog jump and create a chorus of nighttime sounds.

With a dome that revolves 360 degrees and a new, university-grade16-inch Meade telescope, the rooftop Abbitt Observatory, accessible to all by elevator, will provide visitors with spectacular views of the sun during clear days, and beautiful objects in the night sky on designated evenings.

The planetarium remains in the current museum building, but a new original production, "Ten Steps to the Universe," celebrates the opening of the new building. This program carries the viewer on an amazing journey of ever-widening scope...from the shores of our Commonwealth to the very edges of the known universe. Along the way, it will explore the historical breakthroughs that have allowed us to expand our understanding of the cosmos and our place within it. Dramatic music and phenomenal images, including some from the Hubble Space Telescope, will keep people of all ages enthralled.

Outdoors a 3/4-mile elevated boardwalk loops across Deer Park Lake and through 10 acres of woods and creeks with animals such as river otters, beavers, bobcats, coyotes, deer and wild turkeys living in natural habitats. The red wolves on display are part of a federal program to rebuild the population of the most endangered mammal in North America. Also on the boardwalk is the Coastal Plain Aviary, a dramatic walk-through aviary filled with coastal birds such as pelicans, herons, egrets and ducks. The aviary opened in 2001 as the first phase of the expansion.

Designed by Aram Mardirosian of The Potomac Group, McLean, Va., the building was constructed by W.M. Jordan Company of Newport News, Va. Cochran Construction Co. of Hampton, Va., built the boardwalk. The indoor exhibits are being built by Petraworks of New Jersey and Aquarium Innovations of Georgia.

The $22.6 million expansion was financed with grants from the City of Newport News and donations from businesses, foundations and private individuals. The museum is still about $5.7 million away from its goal for the project and continues its fund-raising efforts.

The museum is located between Williamsburg and Norfolk/Virginia Beach at 524 J. Clyde Morris Blvd., Newport News (I-64, exit 258-A). It is completely handicapped accessible.

It is open daily. Winter hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. It is closed Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year's Day. From Memorial Day to Labor Day, the museum is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily.

Admission prices are $10.50 for adults and $7.50 for children. Planetarium admission is $3. Combination tickets with the planetarium are $12.50 for adults and $9.50 for children. Group rates are available for groups of ten or more.

For more information contact the museum at 757-595-1900 or visit the web site at www.valivingmuseum.org. Group reservations can be made at 757-595-9135.