YORKTOWN, Va., May 10, 2013 – With a newly created logo on display, a cornerstone was dedicated today for the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown, which will replace the Yorktown Victory Center, a museum of the American Revolution operated by the state’s Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation.
 |
| Above, the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation’s 18th-century honor guard marches past speakers at the May 10 cornerstone dedication for the new American Revolution Museum at Yorktown. Shown below is the newly designed American Revolution Museum at Yorktown logo. |
 |
University of Virginia Professor A. E. Dick Howard, Virginia Secretary of Education Laura W. Fornash, and Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation and York County leaders spoke before the unveiling of the 12- by 24-inch marble cornerstone for an 80,000-square-foot museum building that soon will begin to take shape.
“When we tell the story of the American Revolution, as it will be told in the new museum,” Professor Howard said in his address, “we’re also telling the story that resonates everywhere that people yearn for accountable government, the rule of the law, and the freedom of the human spirit.”
“School systems and museums have been long-standing partners in student education,” Secretary Fornash said. “As new education models are tried and tested, and as reforms in our educational systems are implemented more broadly, the new American Revolution Museum at Yorktown will certainly be an example for what works in education.”
A logo for the new museum incorporating the name with patriotic imagery of a soaring eagle and stars, in red and blue on a white background, was adopted May 9 by the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation Board of Trustees and Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, Inc., Board of Directors along with a new logo for Jamestown Settlement, a museum of 17th-century Virginia. The new Yorktown museum logo will be used in early awareness initiatives. Full implementation of both logos – designed by BCF, a Virginia Beach brand communications firm specializing in the travel industry – will begin in 2016, the year the transition from Yorktown Victory Center to American Revolution at Yorktown will be complete.
The American Revolution Museum at Yorktown will chronicle the Revolution from the beginnings of colonial unrest to the early national period and consider its meaning and impact. The project encompasses reorganization of the 22-acre site; a new building to house expanded exhibition galleries, classrooms and support functions; and expansion and relocation of the existing re-created Continental Army encampment and Revolution-period farm. Total cost of planning and major components is estimated at $50 million. Building and exhibit construction and renovations to the site are funded by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Private donations will support elements of gallery and outdoor exhibits and educational resources.
While exhibits and parking availability will be impacted at various stages of construction, which started in 2012, the Yorktown Victory Center will continue in daily operation while the transition to American Revolution Museum at Yorktown is under way.
For more information, visit www.historyisfun.org.
###
