Nothing New Under the Sun

On June 28, 2026 the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum opens four new permanent galleries across an expanded second floor, the culmination of nearly a decade of planning. Spanning 1917 to 1924 and beyond, they trace the years that built modern America, and they argue that those years rhyme unmistakably with our own

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Stories Sewn Into a Seam

Stories Sewn Into a Seam

We are taught to read history through documents: speeches, treaties, the papers of presidents. But a dress is a document too, and often a more honest one. What a woman wore records who she really. You can read a life in a hemline. The weight of a fabric tells you whether she worked; a mended elbow, what she could afford; a waistline, what her body was expected to be. Women’s clothing has too often been treated as trivial, precisely because it belonged to women. This exhibition treats it as evidence. Walk the galleries in order. You will see women’s freedom grow.

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Podcast: The "U" is Silent - We Aren't (Visit Staunton)

Podcast: The "U" is Silent - We Aren't  (Visit Staunton)

From a dairy farm to the helm of a presidential library — Robin Von Seldeneck's journey is one worth hearing. In this episode, Samantha sits down with the President & CEO of the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum in Staunton, Virginia, to explore how museums are becoming something more than collections of artifacts. They're becoming places where communities can wrestle with hard truths. Robin shares her vision for honest dialogue around Wilson's complicated legacy on race, power, and democracy, and what it means for a small city to carry the weight of a president's story.

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Wilson's Sheep

Wilson's Sheep

For several years, beginning in the spring of 1918, a flock of sheep grazed on the White House Lawn. After America entered World War I, the sheep helped to save manpower by keeping the grass trimmed. We don’t exactly who came up with the idea, but Dr. Cary Grayson contacted his horseracing friend Wiliam Woodward about getting some sheep for the president. Woodward sent along a small flock from his farm in Maryland by wagon.

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Woodrow Wilson: The President Who Loved Baseball

Woodrow Wilson: The President Who Loved Baseball

The earliest historical evidence produced by Woodrow Wilson were doodles written in a school geography textbook in 1870. Alongside drawings of a greyhound and hot air balloons, there is a sketch of a baseball diamond and two line ups of the Light Foot Base Ball Club of Augusta, Georgia. As second baseman and club secretary, Wilson clearly had a great interest in the game from a young age.

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Meeting Royalty

Meeting Royalty

After the end of World War I, President Wilson traveled to Europe to participate in the negotiations of the Paris Peace Conference, ultimately producing the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. However, he first traveled to London, England and met with the British Royal family on Boxing Day, December 26, 1918.

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