LGBT History Exhibit Coming To Fredericksburg Museum in 2024

FREDERICKSBURG, VA — The Fredericksburg Area Museum will unveil an LGBTQ+ history exhibit in June 2024, museum officials announced. The exhibit will honor the history, contributions, and stories of LGBT people and allies.

Fredericksburg Area Museum curator Sarah Ernst is hard at work finding historical documents and records of LGBTQ+ people in the region's storied history. However, Ernst is also encouraging current residents to share their own stories.

The Fredericksburg Area Museum now has an anonymous phone line where residents can share their own LGBTQ+ love stories. Ernst told Patch that phone number is totally anonymous and there is no way to identify callers.

The anonymous line can be reached at 540-385-5500.

Ernst said they are interested in any story from LGBTQ+ residents.

"We're interested in anybody's story is the main thing," Ernst told Patch. "We don't want anybody to think their story isn't fantastical enough."

Ernst has been surprised by the amount of LGBTQ+ history in the Fredericksburg region. She noted that though LGBTQ+ people have been regularly erased or minimized in historical documents, many stories are hiding in plain sight.

"We have some stories that we've sussed out from the 1800s," Ernst said in an interview. "We have a woman who leaves her entire estate to a woman that she refers to as her wife. So we're unpacking all these lovely stories and there's a very long Queer history in Fredericksburg."

The Fredericksburg museum is including an array of artifacts in the exhibit including paintings, journals, newspaper articles, and voicemails.

"It's important for people to be seen. It's important for people to feel, in their communities, that their stories are valued and that we want to preserve their stories and we want to celebrate them," Ernst said. "Especially this group of people with what they're facing right now in some states around the country. It's really important that we show that support."

To encourage residents to share their stories, the Fredericksburg Area Museum will be holding monthly mixers starting on Dec. 2 at 4 p.m. The full schedule of mixers is available on the museum's website.

The museum has not received any negative feedback about the planned exhibit. Ernst told Patch that Fredericksburg has a long history of supporting LGBTQ+ residents that continues to this day.

"During the height of the AIDS epidemic, CVHS, the group that provides health services, they were actually 100 percent funded by downtown merchants," Ernst said. "People would bring in mayonnaise jars and then the community would fill the mayonnaise jars and then [health officials] would come back and pick it up. So I think that's a really great testament to the support that's here."