After being closed for renovations since Feb. 24., the Fairfax Museum and Visitors Center celebrated its grand reopening this past weekend.
"We want to be more of a community service facility, as well as serve visitors on the Interstate," said Christopher Martin, the city's director of human resources.
The renovations represent a 10-year fund-raising effort to upgrade the museum. Since its opening in 1992, the city as well as volunteers with Historic Fairfax City Inc. (HFCI) raised $115,000 to remodel the first floor of the building.
Renovations include museum-quality cases and lighting; a new seating area to the Visitors Center; a large, flat-screen monitor embedded in a blackboard; and an expanded gift shop.
In addition to the renovations, the museum introduced a shift in its offerings. The first floor will feature rotating exhibitions, and the second floor will contain permanent exhibits with artifacts documenting the region's history. The rotating exhibitions are planned with school groups and the returning visitor in mind, Martin said.
The current exhibition on the first floor of the museum is "Raids, Romance and Writings: Fairfax Court House in the Civil War." The exhibit, which features some loaned artifacts and actual letters from the period, will be at the museum until December. The next exhibition will look at suburban housing in Northern Virginia.
THE MUSEUM "will benefit not only the city but visitors who come to the Visitors Center from all over the United States," said Hildy Carney, president of HFCI.
The renovations represent the city's desire to make Fairfax a destination in the historical tourism market. Indeed, the Fairfax City Council recently approved the Destination Fairfax initiative, which will bring travel writers to the region to show them the historic treasures of the area.
"Now we're ready for them," Martin said. "And we have a lot to show them, just in that one building."
While the museum will serve two constituencies, the out-of-town visitor and the returning area resident, its mission is a regional one.
"Our scope really is regional. And we're starting to take advantage of that more and more," Martin said.
The next phase for the museum is to renovate the second floor of the former schoolhouse building, using funds from the Fairfax City's capital improvements program. The museum is expected to get $148,000 to create a permanent exhibition on Fairfax history, tentatively titled "The Fairfax Story." The exhibition would coincide with Fairfax City's bicentennial in 2005.