Freeman Store And Museum To Reopen With New Exhibits

VIENNA, VA—Vienna's Freeman Store and Museum reopens Thursday, March 1 for the 2018 season, bringing with it two new addition. The museum has added exhibits on women's rights and World War I.

The "Home Front – The Great War and Vienna" exhibit commemorates the 100th anniversary of World War I ending.

Located on the second floor, it contains information, images, models, and artifacts, including uniforms, equipment, and documents, from the Great War, which the U.S. entered in 1917. The exhibit also will include a diorama of the fearsome trenches that were ubiquitous on World War I battlefields as well as a graphic display of awards and decorations.

“Vienna didn’t have an awful lot to do with the war,” said Mike Berger, a curator with Historic Vienna. “Seventy-three men with a Vienna address fought in the war."

Visitors may recognize two names that the local American Legion Post is named after. Vienna's own George Dyer and Clarence Gunnell lost their lives in World War I.

World War I postcards, pins, and notecards will be available for purchase at the store. The pins feature a poppy, a reminder of the great human cost of war and a universal symbol of military remembrance, or an image of Uncle Sam from the iconic “I Want You” poster by James Montgomery Flagg.

“It’s really neat that we were able gather and can share with the community real 100-year-old stuff that was actually there on the battlefields and in the ambulances of World War I,” says Anne Stuntz, president of Historic Vienna, Inc.

Downstairs in the Freeman House, the other new exhibit is "The Women’s Rights Movement through Cartoons." The exhibit features more than 50 political cartoons and other images collected from newspapers, postcards, and other publications from the 1850s onward. The cartoons focus on the right to vote as well as other women’s rights for which Elizabeth Cady Stanton fought, including rights related to parental custody, property, employment and income, divorce, economic health of the family and birth control.

“We tried to include cartoons that made a statement about what people were really thinking about at the time,” said exhibit curator Leigh Kitcher.

Community members are invited to an opening reception Sunday, March 4 from 2 p.m.-4 p.m. The exhibits will be accessible when the museum opens for the season from Wednesdays through Sundays from noon-4 p.m.

The Freeman Store and Museum is located at 131 Church Street NE in Vienna.

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Image: Curator Mike Berger with artifacts from the World War I exhibit via Town of Vienna