Nominate treasures for Virginia’s Endangered Species list

The Virginia Association of Museums (VAM) (http://www.vamuseums.org) invites museums, libraries, archives, and historic sites across Virginia and Washington, DC to nominate items from their collections for the Virginia’s Top 10 Endangered Artifacts (http://www.vatop10artifacts.org) program. The program seeks to increase awareness of collections care issues and showcases our diverse histories, cultures, and art, and the important role artifacts play in our collective heritage. 

Top 10 Nominee from the Library of Virginia, 2015 was the Richard Young 1817 Manuscript Map of Richmond.

Unique, irreplaceable artifacts in the care of collecting institutions help tell the stories of our local communities, the Commonwealth, and the nation. Virginia’s Top 10 Endangered Artifacts program gives participants the opportunity to build awareness of their organizations and the challenges and expense involved in collections care. It also offers them a platform to share significant narratives and histories related to those endangered artifacts.

Collecting institutions may join VAM and nominate an artifact between now and the end of June.

In July, VAM will announce its list of nominees. Throughout August, members of the public cast votes online for their favorite endangered artifact. Via donation buttons on the voting site, the public may also donate to their favorite nominating organization when they vote.

Public voting has been extremely successful in raising awareness of endangered artifacts, logging over 450,000 votes to date. In September, our panel of collections care experts will evaluate the nominees and choose the Top 10. Finally, VAM will announce the honorees in the 2016 program in late September, just ahead of National Arts and Humanities Month, taking place in October.

While no monetary award is tied to the Virginia’s Top 10 Endangered Artifacts, the program has raised awareness for more than 100 endangered artifacts. 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. 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, and Colorado.

Virginia’s Top 10 Endangered Artifacts program was inspired by Preservation Virginia’s Most Endangered Historic Sites program and was originally made possible by a Connecting to Collections Statewide Implementation Grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services.