Nominations due by June 22 for Virginia’s Top 10 Endangered Artifacts program

In 2014 soldiers’ graffiti written on the walls of Liberia Plantation’s manor house in Manassas was voted among Virginia’s Top 10 Endangered Artifacts.

Now the Virginia Association of Museums is encouraging museums, libraries, archives, and historic sites in Virginia and Washington, DC to nominate items from their collections for the fifth annual Top 10 Endangered Artifacts program.

The program showcases our diverse histories, cultures, and art, and the important role artifacts play in our collective heritage. 

From ledgers and landing maps to tribal regalia and trains, artifacts in the care of collecting institutions help tell the stories of our local communities, the Commonwealth, and the nation.

Participants in Virginia’s Top 10 Endangered Artifacts program have the opportunity to share significant stories while building awareness of their institutions and the challenges and expense involved in collections care.

Collecting institutions may nominate an artifact between now and June 22. Soon after that, Virginia Association of Museums will unveil the list of nominees, and the public will have the opportunity to cast votes online for their favorite endangered artifact during August.

VAM will announce the 2015 honorees on Sept. 15, after its panel of independent conservators and collections care experts evaluates the nominees and chooses the Top 10.

While no monetary award is tied to the Virginia’s Top 10 Endangered Artifacts, the program has already created recognition for over 90 artifacts in need of conservation.

Organizations have leveraged their participation to gain a variety of benefits, from attracting new audiences and press coverage, to receiving grants and raising funds to conserve their artifacts.

The public has been overwhelmingly supportive by logging hundreds of thousands of votes in favor of conservation.

VAM’s Top 10 program has been so successful in bringing attention to conservation needs, that it has been replicated in other states, including Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, North Carolina, and Colorado, according to a VAM press release.

For more information go to http://www.vamuseums.org