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Virginia's Top 10 Endangered Artifacts

The Virginia Association of Museums is out with its top 10 list of Endangered Artifacts in the state. The  list is intended to raise awareness about for care for the objects that tell Virginia’s stories.

The annual list serves as a companion of sorts, to the one put each year by Preservation Virginia, highlighting endangered places….the Virginia Association of Museum list though focuses on the items that live inside  museums, galleries and libraries.

Items include a flag from the 299th Combat Engineer Battalion, flown at the D-Day Assualt on Utah Beach in 1944…it’s housed at the  National D-Day Memorial in Bedford

At Roanoke's Historical Society of Western Virginia, the "water works map of Roanoke"-- a lithograph from 1888, made the list.

There’s also the Rice D. Montague Account Book from the 1860s, which has found a home at the Montgomery Museum in Christiansburg.

From the Virginia Association of Museums,  Christina Newton says the public had a hand in culling the list of nominees—with an online voting component.   The top vote-getter, goes to Abingdon’s William King Museum, which houses an untitled painting by Appalachian Folk Artist Minnie May Scyphers.  Created in the 1970s, it’s the youngest piece on the list--- but still in need of costly, time-consuming care, says Newton.

Also making the list-- illustrations for  the book "The Raven"  by artist James Carling in 1884, housed in the  Edgar Allen Poe Museum in Richmond.

Also in Richmond, at Saint John's Church, there’s the Reverend Robert Rose Monument from 1751.

From Hampton Roads, a World War 2 Filipino and U.S. Guerrilla Unit Flag from the 1940s is found at Norfolk’s MacArthur Memorial....and from Portsmouth, the mid-20th century scrapbook  of Bertha Mae Winborne, the city’s first African American Librarian is featured in the Black History Museum there.

A watercolor painting of Warrenton during the Civil War from 1862 is also listed, located in the Old Jail Museum there.

And from Washington D.C.-- there's a wedding trunk from Martha Washington, bought as a gift to her granddaughter in 1795. It resides in the Tudor Place Historic House and Garden.

For more information about the Virginia Association of Museums, click here.

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