Tag Archives: exhibits

Poe Museum Invites Artists to Take Part in Exhibit

For the third year in a row, the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia is inviting artists to paint, sketch, or photograph the museum’s legendary Enchanted Garden for its exhibit Painting the Enchanted Garden 3, which opens May 26 and runs until July 17. The great quality and variety of the artists in the…

When Hollywood Came to the Poe Museum

Carl Laemmle, Jr. needed a monster. The twenty-three year old president of Universal Pictures had produced a string of successful features since inheriting the company as his twenty-first birthday present. It was the depths of the Great Depression. Thousands were unemployed. More than ever, Americans needed an escape, and it came in the form of…

Memento of a Lost Love is Poe Museum’s Object of the Month

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, we thought the Poe Museum’s Object of the Month for February should be a memento of Poe’s “first and last love.” Edgar Allan Poe was a distasteful subject in Elmira Royster Shelton’s home. In fact, her daughter forbade her to mention his name in her presence. For decades,…

Picture Yourself Inside a Poe Story

Ever want to feel what it’s like to get bricked up behind a wall or buried under the floorboards? Here is your chance to step inside Edgar Allan Poe’s greatest terror tales in the Poe Museum of Richmond’s chilling new exhibit “Poe’s Greatest Hits.” Visitors to the exhibit will be able to interact with life-size…

Mystery Picture Reveals Poe’s Artistic Side

Did Edgar Allan Poe paint this little watercolor? Poe certainly showed an interest in visual art and even tried his hand at drawing. In one of his letters he mentions having a drawing he made of his childhood sweetheart Elmira Royster, and he may also have sketched on his dorm room walls at the University…

Could this be the real Annabel Lee?

From the man who sneaked into his dead wife’s crypt to spend the night on her corpse to the woman who believed she was in communication with Poe’s spirit after his death, colorful characters seemed to flock to Edgar Allan Poe. But Stella stands out even among this crowd. It is said that, when he…

Artifact Shows Nineteenth Century Fascination with Murder and Violence

The public’s fascination with crime and violence existed long before today’s cop shows and horror movies. Even in Edgar Allan Poe’s time, readers could not get enough true tales of murder and madness. Ample evidence of this fact is to be found in a curious little volume in the Poe Museum’s collection. The Poe Museum’s…

New Exhibit Examines Poe’s Secret Code

Armies have been sending sensitive information through encoded messages for thousands of years to protect that information from falling into enemy hands, but it was Edgar Allan Poe who popularized the use of these cryptograms as a form of entertainment and in fiction with his story “The Gold-Bug.” Even before the publication of this trailblazing…

Poe Museum’s Object of the Month May Hold Clue to Poe’s Mysterious Death

It is one of the stars of the Poe Museum. It has traveled the world and encountered both a U.S. president and the Queen of England. Millions of people, in fact, have seen this simple wooden walking stick. Millions more have read about it in various biographies and novels about Poe. About thirty-six inches long,…

Poe Museum Exhibit Examines One of Mankind’s Greatest Fears

To be buried while alive is, beyond question, the most terrific of these extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality. ~Edgar A. Poe, “The Premature Burial” From August 27 until October 18, 2015, the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond will host Buried Alive, an exhibit exploring the theme of premature…