Press Kit
General Press Release
Nature comes alive at the Virginia Living Museum in Newport News
View endangered red wolves. Get up close to a loggerhead turtle and moon jellies. See fish with no eyes and frogs that change colors. Touch live spider crabs and fossilized dinosaur tracks. It’s all at the Virginia Living Museum, Newport News, where living exhibits depict Virginia’s natural heritage from the mountains to the sea.
The museum introduces visitors to more than 250 living species native to Virginia through exhibits, discovery centers and interactive hands-on exhibits.
Opened in 1987 as the first living museum east of the Mississippi, the Virginia Living Museum is still a museum leader in its use of living exhibits (animals, plants, marine creatures, reptiles, amphibians, birds) to present its message – connecting people to nature through educational experiences that promote conservation.
Each exhibit tells a story. There is the predator-prey relationship between the chipmunk and the corn snake; the camouflage abilities of the flounder, the invasive, but beautiful lionfish, and the complex interrelationships of the animals and plants that inhabit a cypress swamp.
In the two-story, glass-covered walk-through habitats, visitors immerse themselves in natural environments. The cool, moist Appalachian Cove features a waterfall, a swift-running mountain stream and a 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 and snapping turtle.
The Coastal Plain Gallery explores the world’s richest nursery, the Chesapeake Bay. Exhibits range from the dramatic 30,000-gallon Noland Chesapeake Bay Aquarium with its large sea creatures to an underwater view of the intricate and complex life forms that inhabit a wooden piling beneath the ocean waters.
The Piedmont and Mountains Gallery is anchored by a display of the fall line from the James River in Richmond, filled with smallmouth bass, catfish, wood turtles and other aquatic creatures. Also in this gallery, are spotted turtles in an upland bog, yellow perch and tiny red squirrels.
Hanging over the double helix staircase, which represents the genetic basis of life, is a six-foot-diameter globe showing the earth as viewed from space. At the bottom is a scientifically authentic replica of a dinosaur that may have lived in the foothills of Virginia around 200 million years ago. Visitors can touch real dinosaur footprints.
In Virginia’s World of Darkness, visitors come eye-to-eye with tiny sharks, burrowing pine voles, scurrying ghost crabs, playful flying squirrels, eerie moon jellyfish, a giant lobster and other animals that adapt to nocturnal life.
In the Virginia Underground Gallery, visitors wind their way past the striking features of creatures from a limestone cave. The gallery also features a cut-away of the fossil-rich layers along the steep banks of the James River and the colorful gems that can be found in the “jewel box” of an underground mine.
The Chesapeake Bay Touch Tank, hands-on discovery centers and interactive activities in each gallery encourage visitors to expand their knowledge.
With a dome that revolves 360 degrees and a university-grade 16-inch Meade telescope, the rooftop Abbitt Observatory provides visitors with spectacular views of the sun, during clear days, and beautiful objects in the night sky, on designated evenings.
Travel the universe in the Abbitt Planetarium, completely modernized in 2008 with a new, state-of-the-art digital projection system. The digital computer-based Spitz sciDome projection system and Starry Night Dome software created by Imaginova can transport visitors to far-away galaxies in one program and to the microscopic world of atoms in the next.
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, red wolves, beavers, bobcats, coyotes, deer and wild turkeys living in their natural habitats. 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.
Garden, landscape and exhibit plantings display the largest collection of native plants in Virginia. Learn how to build green, live green and garden green in the Conservation Garden and Goodson Living Green House.
The museum, a private non-profit organization, is accredited by both the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the American Association of Museums, a distinction held by only 11 other institutions in the country. It is also a certified Virginia Green attraction.
The museum is located between Williamsburg and Norfolk/Virginia Beach at 524 J. Clyde Morris Blvd., Newport News (I-64, exit 258-A).
Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Winter hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday. The museum is closed Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.
Admission is $17 adults and $13 children (ages 3-12). Group rates are available for groups of ten or more.
For more information, call 757-595-1900. For group reservations, call 757-595-9135.
For information about other attractions and lodging in Newport News, VA., call (toll-free) 888-493-7386 or visit the website at www.newport-news.org.