Building the Shockoe Institute: Our Panel at the VMHC Virginia History Symposium

Our presentation, Building the Shockoe Institute: New Directions in Public Discourse on the History and Legacy of Slavery, was moderated by Shockoe Institute President & CEO Marland Buckner.

As construction continues on the Shockoe Institute’s Expanding Freedom exhibit ahead of our opening in April 2026, we remain focused on putting history to work to improve our civic life. 

Even as the physical space takes shape, the Institute continues its work across the Commonwealth and the nation—engaging audiences, fostering dialogue, and working to develop practical solutions that address the enduring impact of racial slavery on our shared American experience.

That is why we were delighted to be invited to participate in the 2025 Conrad M. Hall Symposium for Virginia History, hosted by the Virginia Museum of History & Culture (VMHC) in early October.  

The Symposium focused on the 250th anniversary of American Independence and the revolutionary role Virginia played in our Nation’s founding. Our panel discussion applied this theme of “Revolutions” to discuss the unique approach we chose when designing our permanent exhibit, Expanding Freedom.  

Our presentation, Building the Shockoe Institute: New Directions in Public Discourse on the History and Legacy of Slavery, was moderated by Shockoe Institute President & CEO Marland Buckner. Buckner led L’Rai Arthur-Mensah, the Executive Account Director at Local Projects and the Institute’s design partner, Dr. Justene Hill Edwards, an award-winning author and associate professor of history at the University of Virginia (UVA), and Dr. Gregg Kimball, the Shockoe Institute’s Senior Consulting Historian, in a wide-ranging panel about the Institute’s exploration of the evolution and enduring impact of American racial slavery and, most importantly, ways to learn, reflect, and act in our own ways, and in so doing, improve our civic life. You can see the Expanding Freedom exhibit take shape in the timelapse video below: 

“This space, over the course of the next year,” Buckner said near the beginning of the panel discussion, “will be transformed into an over 12,000 square foot experience that will allow visitors from all across the country, and indeed the world, to come to Richmond, to come to Shockoe, to better understand the way in which Shockoe is central to understanding the story of America, which is the story of the struggle to expand human freedom.” 

During the discussion, Arthur-Mensah spoke about the design approach the Shockoe Institute has embraced: 

“I've seen a very significant shift in the way we approach visitor engagement and visitor experience design,” she said. “There has been a movement to have more points of reflection, more points of engagement, contribution, and participation. I believe that the Shockoe Institute is really one of only a handful of organizations taking up this approach.” 

When a member of the audience asked how the Shockoe Institute plans to balance the academic with the emotional, Dr. Edwards offered insight into how the Institute is addressing this question: 

“The emotional and the intellectual have to collide in some way,” Dr. Edwards said. “As a historian, it means really taking a step back from the archival record, taking a step back from reading primary sources, and thinking about how this historical actor would have felt. Then how do we catch different types of visitors so they can connect to that story in a different way?” 

Buckner went on to add that the Shockoe Institute will employ interdisciplinary programming, through both the Lab and the Shockoe Institute Presents series, to ensure we’re not only connecting people to these stories but identifying historical throughlines that connect to the modern day.  

“We’re bringing as many tools from as many disciplines as we can,” he said. “We want to give people new ways to take this history that is so difficult that they have just experienced [in the Expanding Freedom exhibit] and ask how we can use that for civic betterment. How can we deploy the lessons we've learned today to improve our communities tomorrow?” 

The conversation soon turned to the idea that some of what the Shockoe Institute has developed and plans to feature in the Expanding Freedom exhibit and related programming may be “politically off-putting” to some visitors. 

Dr. Kimball was ready with an important response that undergirds so much of our work at the Shockoe Institute: 

“We're not trying to create an ideological apparatus here,” he said. “We're trying to be honest across the board and not pander to any one ideological perspective. I think we should always be in dialogue.” 

Buckner followed with a powerful summation that reinforced Dr. Kimball’s statement: 

“We have nothing to fear from the facts,” he said. 

Because so much of our work includes identifying historic throughlines and using that history to improve our civic life, members of the audience were curious about our approach, with one attendee raising a question about how the Shockoe Institute plans to be future facing. 

Dr. Edwards responded by explaining how our understanding of history continues to change—and how this impacts our present-day responses: 

“[We need to] think critically about the ways in which this history reflects what we see today,” she said. “Whether it’s housing or wealth building, a guiding principle would be to continue to find ways to connect this history to what's going on in the here and now. Because one of the fascinating but perhaps heartbreaking parts of the history of slavery is that those tethers and connections continue to play out in incredibly visible ways today.” 

One of the most important moments in the panel came from a simple, colloquial phrase that captured the heart of the discussion: people did stuff. 

Buckner remarked that even though those few words may sound simple, they help to correct a long-held belief about that the evolution of American racial slavery “just happened.” 

Arthur-Mensah nodded to this idea of human agency: 
 
“The intentional decisions made in this country throughout many different eras,” she said, complicated “the ability for Black people to buy land, to start businesses, to reach the American dream we all talk about.” 

Dr. Kimball echoed that point: 

“[Every decision] was intentional,” he reminded the audience. “Slavery didn't just appear. ‘The unthinking decision.’ No! To Colonial white Virginians, this wasn't an unthinking decision. That's something we really need to get over. People do stuff, and we need to be honest about that.” 

In closing, Buckner invited the audience to reflect on the meaning of the exhibit’s title: 

“The name of the exhibit is Expanding Freedom,” he said. “There is no punctuation. You can decide. You can put a question mark there. You can put a period there. You can put an exclamation point there. You can put ellipses there. It's your experience to share. But we welcome you.”