virtual field trip history museum

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10 Virtual History Museums and Experiences to Explore From Home

By: Missy Sullivan

Updated: June 1, 2023 | Original: March 26, 2020

The need for social distancing may have forced museums and historic sites around the world to close their doors for now, but many have made their spaces, exhibits and collections available to anyone with a digital device and a decent web connection. Some offer 360-degree tours, like the one that takes you into every nook and cranny of George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate. Others present virtual exhibits or browsable online archives, such as the dozens on Google Arts & Culture’s site, where partner museums share treasures like the Rosetta Stone and ancient Egyptian artifacts ( The British Museum , London)...iconic 20th century photos (the LIFE Magazine archive)...or troves of sports history (the Olympic Museum , Lausanne, Switzerland). Here are 10 standout virtual history sites worth exploring:

Xi'an Warriors

It was one of the most stunning archaeological finds of the 20th century. In 1974, farmers digging a well stumbled across a life-sized clay figure that, government archaeologists later discovered, belonged to a vast army of terra cotta soldiers created to protect China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, in the afterlife. The massive mausoleum, created around 210 B.C., houses some 8,000 warriors, along with hundreds of chariots and horses—all arranged in battle formation. In 2017, a Chinese company, inspired by Google Street View, created an awe-inspiring virtual experience that lets visitors swoop down into the tomb and “walk” among the soldiers, viewing their unique facial expressions and traces of their original colorful paint at close range. You don’t need to read Chinese to appreciate the enormity of it all.

Click  HERE for the experience.

READ MORE: 5 Things You May Not Know About the Terra Cotta Army

Smithsonian Museum of American History

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History bills itself as the greatest single collection of U.S. history in the world, home to more than 1.8 million objects that each, in some fundamental way, defines the American experience. The museum offers about 100 online exhibits from its encyclopedic collections, each with a mix of photos, video, graphics and text on topics ranging from the life of Abe Lincoln (yep, they’ve got the stovepipe hat) to the development of the first artificial heart to the evolution of voting machines and even an array of vintage lunch boxes. 

READ MORE: 9 of the Most Collectible School Lunch Boxes, 1935 to Now

The Museum of Flight

War planes. Spy planes. Spacecraft. Gliders. Kit planes. Eccentric contraptions. This sprawling museum, adjacent to the Boeing complex south of Seattle, Washington, is considered one of the world’s largest and best air and space museums, with more than 150 aircraft, 25,000-plus aviation-related artifacts and a huge array of exhibits that collectively chronicle man's quest to take to the skies. Flight geeks could easily get lost in its vast searchable and browsable database of those collections while 360-degree tours let you step inside a dozen iconic aircraft—including the Boeing 747, the Concorde and the museum’s full-scale model of the space shuttle orbiter used for training astronauts.

Click HERE for the experience.

READ MORE: Who Was the First President to Fly on Air Force One?

National Women's History Museum

Come for the deep well of biographies and digital classroom resources , stay for the wide array of virtual exhibits , many of which are enabled by Google Arts & Culture. For two decades, the National Women’s History Museum has been the largest online cultural institution telling the stories of women who helped transform the U.S. Heavy with slide shows and graphics, the virtual exhibits document women making waves in politics, sports, civil rights, science and technology and more. Check out its collection of oral histories from the American Rosie Movement, relaying women's contributions to the nation’s defense production.

READ MORE: Women’s History Milestones: A Timeline

Anne Frank House

Anne Frank ’s diary, chronicling her life in hiding during World War II, remains one of the most powerful testimonies to the horrors of the Holocaust. If a trip to Amsterdam to visit the Anne Frank House isn’t in the cards, AnneFrank.org offers the next best thing. In addition to tons of informative content about the teen, her diary and the war, there are bells and whistles galore: an interactive timeline, videos about her life, a 360-degree tour of the house, a virtual reality tour of the secret annex where she and her family hid for 761 days, and a companion exhibit on Google Arts & Culture.

READ MORE: How Anne Frank’s Private Diary Became an International Sensation

Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum

FDR , America’s only four-term president , presided over the nation during two of its most trying ordeals: the Great Depression and World War II . This online experience walks users room by room through the exhibits in his extensive presidential library and museum in Hyde Park, New York, drawing together a wealth of original documents, artifacts, videos, 360-degree tours and more. Together, they illustrate everything from FDR’s little-known assassination attempt to his New Deal policies and wartime decisions to Eleanor ’s significant role. It’s easy to lose track of time clicking through all the fascinating letters, whether it’s from a constituent exhorting him to “discontinue being a smiling, wasteful and fickle prima donna politician” to one from Albert Einstein strenuously detailing his objections to the atomic bomb.

READ MORE: How FDR Became the First—and Only—President to Serve Four Terms

Calling all space geeks: Report to the NASA site for ultimate fun in the final frontier. Get the full scoop on all the key NASA programs past and present, from the Hubble Telescope to the Mars Rover to the upcoming Parker Solar Probe. Check out the History hub to dive deep into photos, videos and articles about all their historic missions. Enjoy a motherlode of space images with the cache of ultra-high-def videos taken from various missions—like the virtual tour of the moon in 4K, enabled by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Spacecraft. For astronaut wannabes, virtual tours abound of NASA’s various research and training facilities—putting users right inside a supersonic wind tunnel, a zero-gravity lab, flight simulators, a space environments complex and much more.

READ MORE: The Space Race

American Battlefield Trust Virtual Battlefield Tours

Most on-site battlefield tours require a leap of imagination: the ability to walk around a perfectly peaceful open field and overlay a mental movie of smoke and combat and fallen warriors, all the while considering the military strategy and broader political stakes. ABT’s website may not offer the sunshine on your back, but it marries the setting, action and context far more seamlessly, with its 360-degree virtual tours of more than 20 American Revolution and Civil War battlefields. In the Gettysburg tour alone, there are 15 different stops—no walking required—each of which features clickable icons with granular detail about all the whos, whats and whys. And when you’re done touring, be sure to explore the site’s other robust resources, from battle summaries to generals’ biographies.

READ MORE: 7 Important Civil War Battles

National Museum of African American History and Culture

While there are plenty of current and past exhibits to explore online here, the real draw is the collections. In the site’s Collections Stories area, museum staff members share objects that resonate for them historically or culturally, whether it’s Muhammad Ali’s training gear...the dress Carlotta Walls, one of the so-called Little Rock Nine , wore when she walked the gauntlet of angry mobs on her first day integrating Little Rock Central High School ...or shards of stained glass from the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama that killed four little girls. And if you’ve got lots of time to explore, browse the museum’s vast open-source collections, brimming with letters, documents, photos and artifacts. They convey the wide-ranging African American experience—from a slave ship manifest to a poster of Sidney Poitier’s film To Sir, With Love . 

READ MORE: One of the Last Slave Ship Survivors Describes His Ordeal in a 1930s Interview

U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

The Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. presents powerful online exhibits brimming with resources such as videos, timelines, glossaries and image galleries rich with potent original artifacts. Themes include Collaboration & Complicity, Nazi Propaganda, Americans and the Holocaust, Racial Health Policies and more. Elsewhere on the museum’s site: a deep archive of survivor interviews , moving artifacts like a gallery of 600 ID cards of Holocaust victims and a place to browse the museum’s huge, sobering collections.

READ MORE: American Response to the Holocaust

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The Holocaust: History and Memory

Virtual tour.

Suitable for classroom use or by families and individuals, this virtual tour, hosted on Google Arts & Culture , allows visitors to explore nine interactive galleries at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. The experience offers a chronological narrative of the Holocaust through encounters with historical artifacts and photographs. Visitors will also see one of the Museum’s conservation labs, allowing them to examine how staff preserve and present Holocaust history.

Preview scenes from the virtual tour

360 view of the Hall of Witness

360 view of a railcar used for deportations to killing centers

Historical photo: the Lodz ghetto

Artifact: Desecrated Torah scrolls

Artifact: a young boy's stuffed bear in one of the Museum's conservation labs

Lesson Plan

Lesson length: One to two class periods

In this lesson , students examine how the Museum uses artifacts and photographs from its collections to present the history of the Holocaust and memorialize its victims—including artifacts and photographs that illustrate important aspects of Holocaust history such as Torah scrolls rescued during Kristallnacht, a train car, prisoner barracks from Auschwitz, and a gas chamber model. Students also tour the Museum's architecture and discuss what makes the Museum a living memorial. Through their exploration of the Museum's exhibitions, students gain a greater understanding of key events and topics related to the Holocaust and are able to explain the systematic nature, scope, and consequences of the Holocaust.

Lesson Plan (PDF)

Worksheet (PDF)

This virtual field trip and lesson were adapted from an activity created in conjunction with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

A previous version of this virtual field trip hosted on Google Expeditions is no longer supported.

This Section

Explore lesson plans and training materials organized by theme to use in your classroom.

• Online Tools for Learning and Teaching
• Videos for Classroom Use

Virtual Field Trips

Welcome to the Natural History Museum of Utah! The Museum is an active research institution and one of our state’s top visitor attractions. Each year the Museum hosts approximately 300,000 guests from around the world, including 40,000 students visiting on free field trips.

We are proud to share our Virtual Field Trips with you. Listed below, you'll find virtual experiences developed and led by our own expert scientists and educators. Here, you can visit our permanent exhibits, our current special exhibition, and our past special exhibitions.

We are happy to provide students and lifelong learners with a taste of all the Natural History Museum of Utah offers—billions of years of natural history. 

Come explore with us by selecting an exhibition below.

We look forward to hosting you in person soon!

Our Backyard

Our Backyard is an intimate, discovery-based environment designed for younger museum visitors to experience natural history first hand. Entering the exhibit, guests will come face to face with live animals and insects native to Utah, explore an underground crawl area, and get their hands wet in the stream play area. 

Past Worlds

Walking through the Past Worlds exhibition, guests will journey through millions of years of Utah’s ancient environments and their changing life forms. Stories of long lost ecosystems and animal diversity, as well as those highlighting the work of Museum paleontologists can be found along the way.

Great Salt Lake

The Great Salt Lake exhibition is a remnant of the once-massive Lake Bonneville, which stretched 300+ miles end to end. Learn about how the Great Salt Lake and surrounding area have evolved over time and meet the diverse creatures that now make it their home.

First Peoples

The First Peoples exhibition allows guests to explore the stories of the Great Basin’s prehistoric peoples, as well as today’s archaeologists studying how those people survived and thrived in this desert landscape.

Utah is a geological wonderland and the Land exhibition introduces guests to the three physiographic regions that formed over millions of years: the Middle Rocky Mountains, Basin and Range, and Colorado Plateau.

The web of life is illustrated in the Life exhibition, exploring complexity from DNA to Ecosystems, with a focus on Utah’s extraordinary biological diversity. This exhibition is rich with images, sounds of the landscape, hands-on experiences, live animals, and research stories.

Native Voices

The Native Voices exhibition features the traditions of Utah’s native people. Designed in consultation with Utah’s Indian community, this exhibition depicts Native American art and culture and interprets the deep memory and contemporary presence of Utah’s indigenous people.

Past Special Exhibitions

Nature all around us.

A homegrown special exhibition, Nature All Around Us introduced guests to the wild plants and animals that share our communities throughout Utah. Guests discovered hidden worlds in familiar places, from backyards to city streets, and learned just how intertwined our lives are with nature. This exhibit is now touring.

Antarctic Dinosaurs

Embark on an adventure to uncover never-before-seen dinosaur fossils from one of the most isolated environments on Earth! Antarctic Dinosaurs , hosted at NHMU from October 2020 to April 2021, was an immersive experience that transported visitors back 200 million years to discover what life was like in prehistoric Antarctica.

• Revolutionizing Education: A Comprehensive Review of HistoryView VR
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• Matterport Launches Social Impact Program to Help Nonprofits and Public Education Institutions
• Bringing History to Life with Virtual Field Trips on HistoryView.org
• Enhance Your Virtual Field Trip Experience with Histora: ChatGPT AI Teacher Assistant, Historian, and Tour Guide on HistoryView
• Exploring the Benefits for Museums, Art Galleries, Historical Sites, and Educators

HistoryView

Free Educational Virtual Tour Platform of Museums, Art Galleries, National Parks and Historic Sites

Virtual Library

Welcome to the enhanced experience of historyview.org’s virtual tours.

Embark on a thrilling journey through time with HistoryView.org’s immersive 3D virtual field trips! Marvel at the beauty of world-class museums, art galleries, and historic treasures, all from the comfort of your home or classroom. Our cutting-edge Matterport 3D technology whisks you away, placing you in the midst of history’s greatest wonders. Feel the excitement of strolling through captivating exhibits and admiring breathtaking art as if you were there.

Meet Histora, your AI-powered companion, enhancing your adventure with engaging, personalized stories and facts at every turn. Dive into the past with us at HistoryView.org, where history isn’t just learned, it’s experienced. Join our mission to make history an accessible, lively adventure, vital for understanding our world. History is not just a subject, it’s a journey — and with us, it’s a journey you won’t forget.

Please use this clickable table of contents to explore museums, art galleries, historic heritage sites, zoos, and aquariums across different regions and topics:

Our virtual tours work well for classrooms and individual exploration. They create an immersive experience that brings history alive. With Matterport 3D virtual tours, you can:

• Visit famous landmarks and historic sites from around the world.
• Zoom in to see details and read descriptions.
• Learn about each location’s history and significance.
• Go at your own pace, which suits different learning styles.

Our virtual tours are completely free, making them accessible to all, no matter where you are or what your financial situation is. Whether you’re a student, educator, or just curious, our virtual tours are a great way to uncover the stories behind iconic landmarks. Start exploring now and join us on a journey through history!

Please note that all conversations are recorded (DO NOT GIVE PERSONAL INFO)

Virtual Field Trips

Engage in narrated walk-throughs of our most popular exhibitions, featuring content that aligns with standards and explores the wonders of our natural world. These can be viewed as a whole or in topical segments

Now Offering:

Welcome to Fossil Mysteries

From dinosaurs to mastodons to ancient sea cows, discover the rich fossil history of our region. Traveling through a 75-million-year timeline—from the age of dinosaurs to the Ice Age—experience an unfolding of the prehistory of Southern California and the Baja California, Peninsula in Mexico. Recommended for grades 2+.

• Welcome to Fossil Mysteries (complete playlist)
• Cretaceous Period (5:04)
• Eocene Epoch (5:24)
• Pliocene Epoch (5:24)
• Pleistocene Epoch (6:28)

For supplementary materials, you can find lesson plans for Fossil Mysteries and other exhibitions here .

Welcome to Coast to Cactus

Not only is Southern California one of the nicest places to live, it's also one of the most interesting places in the world for its amazing diversity of plant and animal life. This series can be watched in its entirety or can be viewed in shorter, topical segments. Let’s explore. Recommended for grades 2+.

• Welcome to Coast to Cactus (complete playlist)
• Coast (12:49 minutes)
• Chaparral (12:52 minutes)
• Mountains (8:13 minutes)
• Desert (7:09 minutes)

Please enjoy these activities to complement your virtual field trip to Coast to Cactus on Southern California.

• Create a Nature Journal (PDF)
• Coast to Cactus Crossword Puzzles and Answer Keys (PDFs) Coast | Chapparal | Mountain | Desert
• Coast to Cactus Word Search Puzzles and Answer Keys (PDFs) Coast | Chapparal | Mountain | Desert
• Coast to Cactus Glossaries (PDFs) Coast | Chapparal | Mountain | Desert

Let us bring you eye to eye with animals that are common to our region, but sometimes rarely seen because of their seasonality, reclusive nature, or nocturnal lifestyle habits. Learn about unique adaptations that help animals survive. Recommended for grades 2+.

• Skip to primary navigation
• Skip to main content
• Skip to primary sidebar

Carnegie Museum of Natural History

One of the Four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh

Take your group on a virtual adventure with Carnegie Museum of Natural History!  Virtual Field Trips & Activities are offered in a variety of themes and two delivery styles and can be adapted for different age ranges and neurodiverse learners.

Before You Book Your Virtual Field Trip – Gather Information

• Virtual Programs must be booked four weeks in advance.  This allows us to coordinate with you regarding the unique digital needs of your group.
• Have a preferred date for your program and back up date.
• Have the number of children and adults attending your program.

Pricing is $9 per student/learner.

(10 participant minimum)

To request special disability accommodations for virtual programs, please contact groupvi [email protected] There is also a space to request accommodations in the booking form.

We have scholarship opportunities for schools and organizations that qualify.  Apply for a scholarship  for a group visit or field trip.

Pick Your Program Theme & Format

Dinosaur s i n their Time Virtual Tour Explore classic favorites, as well as some surprises, from Dinosaurs in Their Time —Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s core exhibition featuring real dinosaur fossils. Museum experts guide you through an interactive experience broadcast live with amazing views of the fossils and environments on display. Dinosaurs Interactive Lesson and Hands-on Activity Travel back in time to a world ruled by massive plant eaters and vicious carnivores. Discover fossils, learn about what a paleoartist does, and try your hand at this Cretaceous career!

• Powdermill Nature Reserve

Explore the wonders of nature and field research through virtual media! Our expert naturalists will guide you through favorite features of Powdermill Nature Reserve such as Powdermill Run, Black Birch Trail, and indoor nature exhibits as we explore plant and animal adaptations to different habitats. Plus learn how scientists safely study birds at Powdermill Avian Research Center, examine the entomology collection, and more!

Animals & Their Ecosystems

Wildlife Halls Tour Take a virtual tour of the wildlife hall at Carnegie Museum of Natural History and investigate unique adaptations of animals and their environments through drawings and observations. Animals Interactive Lesson and Hands-on Activity Meet some of the live animals in the museum collection we call animal ambassadors! Learn about their habitats, adaptations, and what we as people can do to protect their wild relatives.

Walton Hall of Ancient Egypt Tour Take a virtual tour to explore the connections between nature and human culture in Ancient Egypt. Egypt Interactive Lesson and Hands-on Activity Write your name in hieroglyphics, analyze awesome artifacts, and create your very own food mummy with the museum educators.

Spend time with the live reptiles at the museum and learn about their adaptations. Identify differences between reptiles and amphibians, and see if you can design some cool new habitats for our scaly friends to explore!

Rocks & Geology

Discover the hidden wonders of rocks and minerals! Learn why some rocks glow and others float, and use clay to demonstrate the transformation of some rocks under heat and pressure.

Plants & Botany

Get cool, green, and shady with museum educators as you learn about the ways plants are important for humans and wildlife across the world. Design your own plant specimen while learning about the function of different plant parts.

Get up-close with Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches and discover what makes insects special. Learn about the important roles insects play in the environment, and experience pollination first-hand with your own hand-made butterfly or bumblebee.

Three Sisters: Haudenosaunee Science & Culture

Explore contemporary cultures of the Haudenosaunee people (also called Iroquois) and their relationships with the natural world. Examine tools and hand-crafted objects to learn about unifying themes and unique beliefs across the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and Tuscarora nations.

.ugb-3d007ca .ugb-blockquote__quote{width:70px !important;height:70px !important} The virtual field trip today was AWESOME! The kids enjoyed it, were engaged, and had fun. I know they knew a lot, but they also LEARNED a lot-the content was thorough and well presented and I loved that it looked like we were right there in the museum with you next to the exhibits. It was one of the best virtual programs I have seen so far. Jane Camp, Supervisor of Student Events, PA Cyber

Book Your Virtual Field Trip & Activity

Book online.

Book your field trip online and our Visitor Services team will get back to you via email to confirm details about your upcoming visit. If you have any questions, please email  [email protected]  for more information.

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Field Trips

Virtual Field Trips

How have women used their power to create change? Explore the stories of women throughout U.S. history that have fought for their rights and changed their communities. Participants will learn more about women’s history through an interactive virtual experience with expert museum educators. 

Field trips are available between September-November and February-April each year.

Tours of Black Feminist DC at DC Public Library

Students can explore the themes of We Who Believe in Freedom:  Black Feminist DC in person during a free guided tour with a docent! These in-person field trips will be available through September 15th, 2024.

To request a tour of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library and  Black Feminist DC , email  [email protected]  with your preferred date and time.

Skip to Main Content of WWII

Virtual field trips.

The National WWII Museum offers the following interactive, fast-paced interactive lessons that are videoconferenced LIVE into classrooms across the country. Guided by a museum educator, students analyze maps, photographs, artifacts, posters, speeches, and songs as they explore the chronologies, strategies, motivations, and outcomes behind these fascinating chapters of WWII history. All sessions are built to invite student participation and allow for a Q & A at the end. 

These virtual field trips are not virtual tours of the museum. 

Virtual Field Trips are $100 per session.

Virtual Field Trips are typically held between 7:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. CT. If you need to book outside of those hours  or would like to book multiple / consecutive Virtual Field Trips please email the distance learning team .

Explore all of our program offerings below. 

Register Now

Virtual Field Trip Options

What Comes Next: The End of World War II

This Virtual Field Trip focuses on what comes next in the five years following World War II in Europe and Japan. Students will learn about how the United States and the other Allied Powers began the process of rebuilding and recovery after the war. This Virtual Field Trip will cover topics including the creation of the United Nations, the Marshall Plan, the Nuremberg Trials, and the Occupation of Japan. Utilizing primary sources like maps, photographs, and oral histories from the Museum’s collection, students will learn about the state of the world after World War II.

Los Veteranos: Latinos in WWII

An important part of U.S. history long before WWII, the war gave Latinos new opportunities and presented them with new challenges. Because Latinos did not serve in segregated units, as African Americans did, their WWII history is sometimes overlooked. Was that history unique, and if so, how? Students learn about Latino WWII heroes and average soldiers, as well as issues of ethnicity and acculturation on the Home Front.

This program is offered free of charge during National Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15- October 15) through generous support from Pan American Life Insurance Group.

A Day of Infamy: The Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor

In the war that changed the world it was the day that changed the war—a “Day of Infamy.” That day brought the United States into WWII, adding the strength and determination of the American people to the Allied arsenal as it struggled to defeat the Axis. Students explore Japanese and American motivations and actions through animated maps and both Japanese and American primary sources.

Iwo Jima and the War in the Pacific

Students learn about the vastness of the Pacific Theater by exploring its geography. They survey the Island Hopping campaign using maps and viewing video of oral histories. Next they will try their hand at being historians through an artifact investigation of a Navy “Shellback” certificate. This leads up to the invasion of Iwo Jima. Here they explore the campaign and analyze the photograph of the flag-raising on Mt. Suribachi.

D-Day: The Turning Point of the War in Europe

Students receive background on Operation Overlord through maps and audio-visual presentations, explore a map of Northern Europe to learn about the challenges of planning and executing Operation Overlord. The students will play the role of an Allied Commander as they make decisions about where and when D-Day should be launched through voting on scenarios with their classmates. D-Day: what a difference a day makes

The Holocaust: One Teen's Story of Persecution and Survival

Hear personal testimony from Eva Schloss, stepsister of Anne Frank and survivor of Auschwitz. Through video recorded selections of Eva's story from the Museum's oral history collection, students will encounter the physical and emotional ordeal of going into hiding, being captured by the SS and sent to the largest concentration camp in the Third Reich. Students will understand the necessity of exploring this topic even as we approach 70 years after the war's end.

Sponsored by Taube Philanthropies and part of the Taube Family Holocaust Education Program.

Don't You Know There's A War On?! The American Home Front

Students explore rationing, scrapping, War Bonds, and war production through the eyes of students. Together they find answers more satisfying than the wartime standard: “Don't You Know There's A War On?” Primary sources viewed include wartime newsreels, high school yearbooks, posters, photographs, and songs.

Now with two options: Book either the Upper Elementary/Middle School OR High School level program

Double Victory: African Americans in WWII

Students learn about the triumphs and challenges experienced by African Americans on the battle fronts and on the Home Front. The program follows along with songs by Josh White to help the students further examine the treatment of African Americans leading up to WWII. They meet Pearl Harbor hero Dorie Miller, the Montford Point Marines, the Tuskegee Airmen, and an African American Medal of Honor recipient.

The Warrior Tradition: American Indians in WWII

In addition to the most famous group of American Indians, the Navajo Code Talkers, uncover surprising and lesser-known stories of these American Indians in uniform. Hear segments from the Museum’s oral history collection, including Medal of Honor recipient Van Barfoot,and the last surviving Crow war chief Joe Medicine Crow. With a focus on language and symbols, learn more about American Indians leading up to WWII, explore how the Code Talkers used their once-suppressed languages to successfully transmit code on the battlefront, and discuss why native language and terminology are still relevant today.

It's OUR War, Too! American Women in WWII

When Americans were called to action, women “did their part” despite stereotyping and discrimination. The war spurred many women to enter the workforce for the first time, all while managing a household alone and upholding wartime duties. Women answered the call of Uncle Sam and enlisted in military auxiliary groups, fulfilling critical roles stateside and abroad. Hear accounts from real Rosie the Riveters and women near the battle fronts. Visit the Hollywood Stage Door Canteen and discover how starlets, singers and celebrities lifted the spirits of our troops. Learn about the lasting legacy of women’s contribution to the war effort.

I AM an American: Japanese Incarceration in WWII

Students explore the story of Eva Hashiguchi, who spent her high-school days incarcerated in Jerome, Arkansas. Through her account, witness how wartime hysteria and racial prejudice led to one of the darkest chapters of American history. Examine the country’s actions to apologize for the injustices committed against Japanese Americans. Hear about the struggles and tremendous accomplishments of the Purple Heart Battalion.

The War That Changed Your World: Science & Technology in WWII

Today’s televisions, computers, and cell phones can all trace their origins to technological advancements realized during WWII. Students learn about radar, rockets, penicillin, blood plasma, computers, and the atomic bomb; and how these inventions continue to affect their lives today.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who can participate.

K-12 classrooms, library patrons, lifelong learning groups.

This is a guided interactive experience with a trained Museum educator in our state-of-the-art distance learning studio. Although the educator will show images of the Museum on the green screen, it does not mimic a traditional field trip experience.

Is this a tour of the Museum's galleries?

No. This is a guided interactive experience with a trained Museum educator in our state-of-the-art distance learning studio. Although the educator will show images of the Museum on the green screen, it does not mimic a traditional field trip experience.

What is the program length?

Approximately one hour but we can also accommodate class periods of less than one hour.

What is the cost?

$100 per Virtual Field Trip program. Volume discounts available.

How many students can be accomodated?

These programs are designed to be experienced by one class of students at a time, so each student has more opportunity to participate. Larger groups can be accommodated.

Can I book more than one Virtual Field Trip consecutively?

For participants needing to book multiple or consecutive Virtual Field Trips, please make note of this in the ‘Other Information’ field on the reservation form, or reach out directly to the distance learning team .

What platforms are used?

We connect with schools using Zoom Meeting Rooms and Zoom Webinars. If your school uses a different platform please specify that in the booking form.  

How do I book?

Complete the online request form by clicking any of the register buttons on the page. You will be able to select an available time directly on the calendar.

Additional Questions? Email the distance learning team .

Register for Your Virtual Field Trip Now

Virtual Tour

Visit our halls anytime..

The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History virtual tours allow visitors to take self-guided, room-by-room tours of several exhibits and areas within the museum from their desktop or mobile device. Visitors can also access select collections and research areas at our satellite support and research stations as well as past exhibits no longer on display. You can explore the virtual tours here.

Did you know?

The Museum virtual tour is composed of over 750,000 high definition images stitched together!

“Things to Do” 

• Watch narrated virtual tours of select halls.
• Explore teaching resources you can access virtually.
• Search our digital collections .

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Virtual Field Trips

Why history colorado.

History education has the power to transform lives and strengthen communities. Our virtual field trips remove distance as a barrier, enabling students and teachers to explore four different museums from across Colorado, each with their own stories and educational experiences. Each field trip will bring the past to life. Through the power of their own inquiry, students will uncover the legacies of their communities that have shaped—and continue to influence—our Centennial State. 

Cost: $2 per student; teaching staff free;  Title I discounts are available. Duration: 40-45 minutes Times: Tuesday-Thursday at 10:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. Registration required 2 weeks in advance. Space is limited. 

Register Here

Program descriptions: .

Jr. Archaeologist  In this program, students look at the traces left behind by early Colorado people through the lens of an archaeologist and have the opportunity to learn the importance of heritage conservation. (2nd-6th grades.) 

Bison Box Explore the many uses of a bison in Ute culture with objects and stories. (2nd-4th grades.)  

1918 Take your students back in time to 1918 Denver when World War I, the Spanish Flu, and Women’s Suffrage dominated the newspaper headlines. In the 1918 field trip, students explore these themes and everyday life in 1918 Denver with our historically preserved house museum. Students navigate historic spaces with inquiry-based exploration, investigate related primary sources, see demonstrations of everyday hands-on artifacts and learn about the biographies of the historic residents. While this program is designed for students in grades 2nd through 5th, 1918 can be tailored for students of all ages.  

Written on the Land: Ute Science How have Ute people used science, technology, engineering and math to thrive in Colorado? Students explore the Written on the Land: Ute Voices, Ute History exhibit to see Ute structures, beadwork, and baskets, then test materials to see how Ute people solved problems in the past and still do today. (3rd-5th grades)

Thriving and Striving: Mesa Verde  Where did Ancestral Pueblo people find water in the desert? Students tour the Mesa Verde exhibit to search for natural resources that they used to thrive in the southwestern corner of Colorado. (3rd-5th grades)

Homesteading and the Dust Bowl Why did people move to places like Keota and Baca County? Students explore the Keota exhibit to discover how life in the 1920s was different from today--and what life was like during the Dust Bowl years for homesteaders on the Eastern Plains. (3rd-5th grades)

Japanese Internment in Colorado What was life like for Japanese Americans who were forced to live at Amache? Students tour the barracks replica and examine objects that could have belonged to a family who was interned there to learn about the lived experiences of Japanese Americans during World War II. (3rd-5th grades.)

Refuge from Racism: Lincoln Hills What did African Americans do at the resort town of Lincoln Hills? Students visit the Lincoln Hills exhibit to learn about why African Americans established this mountain haven in the 1920s as an escape from racism and a place for recreation. (3rd-5th grades)

Mining Industry: Silverton Mine How did people find silver in the San Juan Mountains? Students visit the Sunnyside Mine to learn about the challenging tasks miners faced and the specialized equipment they used during the 1880s. (3rd-5th grades)

Fur Trade: Bent’s Fort Who came to Bent’s Fort? Students explore the goods and services that people brought to trade at this trading post in the 1830s and 1840s. (3rd-5th grades)

Research Center Virtual Field Trip Research Center staff present the resources available through History Colorado and explain how we can help with students’ research projects.   

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CHM Decodes Technology for Everyone

Come on in.

Exhibits are open Wednesday–Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

CHM has something for everyone, from docent-led tours to demonstrations to self-guided visits. Learn Photoshop from the pros, experience the sights and sounds of classic computing, try your hand at coding, and discover why computer history is more than 2,000 years old. Discover all this and more in CHM’s onsite and online exhibits. 

New Release

CHM collaborated with Audible Originals to create a new podcast series featuring innovative women in tech. Learn more .

MUSEUM HOURS  Monday and Tuesday: Closed Wednesday–Sunday 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Holidays and Closures

LOCATION Computer History Museum 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd. Mountain View, CA 94043   Directions   (650) 810-1010  

Exhibits & Pop-ups

Revolution: the first 2000 years of computing.

Revolution features 19 galleries, 1,100 objects, and inspiring stories from the pioneers and innovators who started the revolution that changed our world. Experience this exhibit online or in person.

Make Software: Change the World!

Make Software explores the history, impact, and technology behind seven game-changing applications: MP3, Photoshop, MRI, Car Crash Simulation, Wikipedia, Texting, and World of Warcraft. Experience this exhibit online or in person.

Little Emoji, Big Story

Little Emoji, Big Story is a wall display that explores the origins of emojis, how new emojis are selected, and the stories of changemakers who have created diverse new emojis.

India's Digital Revolution

Insanely great, a computer for the rest of us, chm in the news, chm announces 2023 fellow awards honorees, chm welcomes turing award winner, chm releases apple lisa source code, file system release, xerox parc archives.

Explore backup project files, including source codes!

Source Code Release

Lisa computer.

Download the Apple Lisa source code now!

Publication

Tech and the future of news.

Learn about critical issues in the news industry.

From Our Blogs

Ibm and the transformation of corporate design.

When IBM hired designers in the 1950s to shape how the public would see the new computing technology, the tech giant changed modern corporate branding forever.

Amplifying History

CHM acquires two early hearing aids that used the new transistor technology of the late 1940s to revolutionize the devices.

Apple insiders told stories and shared memories about creating the beloved Macintosh on its 40th anniversary.

Activities & Resources

#mychmexhibit challenge.

Put on your museum thinking caps and get ready to create your very own exhibit—at home! Participants will learn about the museum exhibit development process and have a chance to role play as a curator, registrar, experience designer, and filmmaker.

Revolution Virtual Scavenger Hunt: For Grades 6–12

Discover the treasures of Revolution: The First 2,000 Years of Computing. Our virtual scavenger hunt is specially designed for students in grades 6–12 and explores the exhibit's key artifacts and stories.

Educator Resource Guide for CHM's Minecraft World

The Great Tech Story, the Museum’s world in Minecraft: Education Edition, inspires and empowers students from ages 8–16 to become engaged technology citizens.

Discover More at CHM

Public Tours & Group Reservations

Core Magazine

Chm on youtube.

CHM Live convenes today’s thought leaders and experts for conversations and debate about the complexities and opportunities presented by technology. View the entire series on CHM's YouTube channel.

Explore these mini-documentaries from our exhibit, Make Software: Change the World! Learn about the history, impact, and technology behind MP3, Photoshop, MRI, Car Crash Simulation, Wikipedia, Texting, and World of Warcraft.

Experience history in the making

Innovation. It’s in our blood. It’s the enduring thread that runs through our history and continues to move us forward. As long as there are customers to be helped, we’ll keep at it. And keep sharing our stories here. Welcome.

This Day in Wells Fargo History April 17, 1861

Equal parts innovation and endurance, we have a long history of helping customers do new and amazing things. You might say getting things done is our specialty.

Museum Experience

Discover nearly two centuries of Wells Fargo history at our museum located in San Francisco’s financial district.

Archives and Resources

Our collection of artifacts and images document a great deal of America’s history and serve as valuable research material to historians and communities.

Featured story

A partnership born to solve challenges

Throughout their lives, Henry Wells and William G. Fargo, the founders of Wells, Fargo & Co., were known for their innovation and dedication to customers.

Manhattan's Chinatown

Jackson heights, queens, crown heights, brooklyn, washington, d.c., los angeles, preserving vietnamese tradition in silicon valley.

by Beth Nguyen

Photos by Patricia Chang

D rive through East San Jose and you’ll find a familiar American landscape: strip malls and franchises, highways and subdivisions. You could be almost anywhere, except for the occasional palm trees, the Diablo mountain range in the distance — and the increasing number of signs written in languages other than English. Because this part of northern California, particularly the few-mile stretch between Story Road and Tully Road, is the home of a thriving Vietnamese and Asian American community.

Like most stories about Vietnamese people in America, this one begins with the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975. Thousands of refugees, fleeing persecution and reeducation camps, arrived in the United States via Camp Pendleton, in Southern California. The federal government tried to resettle refugees in towns across the country but enclaves formed in warm-weather areas: Los Angeles, Houston, New Orleans, and San Jose. The most famous Little Saigon is in Southern California’s Orange County, but San Jose now boasts the greatest number of Vietnamese residents in any one city outside of Vietnam—estimated at more than 180,000 today. It makes sense that so many refugees were drawn to California, which was already home to many Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, and South Indian immigrants and their descendants. While these cultures are all distinct, they shared some staple ingredients and, just as importantly, the understanding of what it means to be have emigrated from Asia. And it makes sense that in the 1980s many Vietnamese refugees headed toward the growing Silicon Valley, where a booming tech industry offered ample manufacturing jobs and opportunities for upward mobility into engineering fields.

South Vietnamese refugees board a U.S. war ship near Saigon in April 1975. (Dirck Halstead/Getty Images)

Though a major tech hub and the largest city in Silicon Valley, San Jose has always been the less-visible cousin to San Francisco an hour or so north. It’s sunnier and less expensive, with room for parking lots and gigantic malls. For immigrants, these aren’t so much signs of suburbia as they are signs of space and possibility: places where real estate might be more accessible; places where families can grow.

Refugees leave their home countries because they have no other choice. They don’t know where they will end up, just that they have to start over. In America, that starting over has always included the pressure to assimilate. The mere existence of immigrant communities can be seen as a refusal to do so: Instead of acculturating, they say, we are here, this is who we are, join us if you like . And if there’s one thing that refugees and immigrants will never give up, it’s their food culture.

Ethnic enclaves tend to grow around restaurants, groceries, and entrepreneurs, all looking for ways to fulfill cravings and provide reminders of home. In San Jose, the new Vietnamese community was bolstered by access to Asian markets in the area, that had already been established by other immigrant families from Asia. In this way, the Vietnamese community developed less as an enclave and more as an integrated, borderless part of the larger San Jose area.

One of the earliest businesses was Lee’s Sandwiches, which sold banh mi out of a truck and eventually grew into a stand-alone shop. Other businesses grew, too: clothing and fabric stores, import stores, music and video stores where you could get tapes of Vietnamese singers and shows. But always, the focal point was food: Places to get pho, banh mi, banh xeo, com tam, cafe sua da , produce, and snacks became social spaces. Places for gathering were always places for eating.

Scenes from San Jose’s Vietnamese community.

It’s probably fitting that the Vietnamese community in San Jose developed around shopping malls, which are nothing if not pragmatic. Lion Plaza on Tully Road, anchored by a giant Asian supermarket, took root in the early 1980s and became the heart of the community. Described by local paper San Jose Mercury News as “a place where no one makes a rendezvous, yet everyone comes,” Lion Plaza was a space for people to meet and for the community to emerge through celebrations at Tet (Vietnamese New Year) and other holidays.

Today, over 40 years after the fall, the original refugees in San Jose are surrounded by children and grandchildren who were born in America, who know Vietnam through stories and culture rather than experience. This generational shift can be seen not only in political viewpoints — the elders have tended to vote Republican, driven by anti-communist beliefs; the twenty-somethings now, much less so — but also in the changing landscape of San Jose’s Asian American community and Silicon Valley. The refugees of the past found work in restaurants, shops, and the early years of tech; many of their descendants are part of the changes driving that industry.

The malls reflect this contrast between generations. Lion Plaza remains old guard, old school. Vietnamese men still hang out and talk near the giant Lion Supermarket. A video store leaves its doors wide open, and Vietnamese songs blare out. Meanwhile, less than three miles away on Story Road, the Grand Century Mall, established in the 2000s, and the new Vietnam Town shopping area next door are all about the now, their architecture marked by a kind of Vegas-y, faux Tuscan look meant to signal affluence and aspiration. Alongside the restaurants are skincare salons and spas, jewelry stores, a plastic surgery center, a professional equipment karaoke store. The music blasting here is millennial. At the same time, shops like Tea Lyfe and Soyful Desserts bring a hipster element to this evolving mix.

Audio: Nuoc Mia Vien Dong

Still, the generations coexist without competing. And in doing so they challenge preconceived ideas about authenticity, as what’s “authentic” isn’t necessarily found at a hole in the wall. San Jose’s Vietnamese community is about embracing tradition and making things new at the same time. Like the rest of Silicon Valley, it’s about growth. You can still find the produce and orchids and even Vietnamese videos, but you’ll also see bubble tea shops and stores devoted entirely to cosmetics. Lee’s Sandwiches is still around, but has grown into a banh mi chain. Pho Hoa, a restaurant that opened in 1983, has become an empire with over 60 locations around the world. Its home on Tully Road has granite countertops and pendant light fixtures. On the menu everything is outlined in English, and amidst more traditional options like the lemongrass pork chop, there’s a kid’s pho meal that comes with an organic juice box. The restaurant has even trademarked the phrase “Health Conscious Choice.” Pho Hoa, the original, is the fulfillment of the American dream of prosperity.

It makes sense that such an empire would begin with pho, surely the most well-known Vietnamese dish in America. With a long-simmered beef broth as its foundation, classic pho contains multitudes — rice noodles, meat, onions, herbs, and spices — in styles particular not just to regions but to families. Beef is common, as is chicken pho, called pho ga . The noodle soup is a concept and a canvas, depending on where you are and who’s doing the cooking. Lime, bean sprouts, hoisin, fresh herbs, and Sriracha all might be offered as garnishes, and now pho, traditionally a breakfast food, can be enjoyed at any time of day. The choice is the diner’s.

Pho with garnishes.

You can find plenty of standout pho restaurants in San Jose, but pho is not the only soup of Vietnam. There’s also bun bo Hue , a spicy beef noodle soup, or the crab-and-tomato noodle soup called bun rieu . Across the street from Lion Plaza, tucked into another shopping mall, the restaurant Cao Nguyen offers up a gorgeous canh chua , a sweet and sour soup with fish.

Food traditions from northern, central, and southern Vietnam all find representation in San Jose, and Vietnamese cuisine travels from the hearty and earthy to the delicate and light. Cao Nguyen’s claypot catfish, intensely caramelized with fish sauce, represents the hearty. And banh xeo, a crispy crepe stuffed with shrimp and pork and served with leafy greens, is light. The crepe is a specialty at many places, and is known by cooks as being one of the more difficult dishes to get just right. In between there are more staples: com tam, or broken rice; lemongrass pork chops; turmeric fish; and fried cha gio egg rolls or fresh rice-paper-wrapped goi cuon rolls — and they all find beautiful iterations in this city.

If you’re not in the mood for something savory, look out for tea and coffee and sweets, including iced coffee with condensed milk called cafe sua da; sugarcane juice, freshly squeezed out from sugarcane stalks; homemade waffles flavored with green pandan; and all manner of che — served warm as a dessert soup ( che troi nuoc ) or chilled as a kind of parfait with layers that might include tapioca, bean paste, grass jelly, taro, and often topped with shaved ice or served warm.

Ly Tong, an activist from San Jose, went on a hunger strike for three weeks to oppose the San Jose City Council’s decision not to name the Vietnamese retail area Little Saigon in 2008 — the decision was later repealed. (Marc Martin/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images)

Immigrants in America have always preserved their culture through food. Eventually, the rest of the country catches on. The earliest Vietnamese refugees remember Sriracha as an ingredient that white Americans looked upon as foreign, commercialized by a fellow refugee who opened the company in 1980, making hot sauce inspired by the flavors of Vietnam. Now the sauce is mainstream, tamed in mayonnaise even in fast-food chains. Is this a sign of progress, appropriation, assimilation? Depends on whom you ask. Immigrant communities exist in a space between the everyday and the “exotic,” ordinary to those who live there and a source of fascination to those who do not. Some years ago in San Jose there was a heated debate about the attempt to brand the Story Road area as “Little Saigon;” some wanted it to be called “Saigon Business District” instead. Though Little Saigon eventually won, it’s a designation that is more understood than commonly used.

Unlike Chinatowns in San Francisco or New York, the “Little Saigon” areas of San Jose are not known as a tourist destination, not even in the Bay Area. This is a community that goes about its business for the people who live there. The 2007 opening of San Jose’s Viet Museum, the first of its kind in the United States, signaled how integral the Vietnamese population had become to the area. But that too is an under-the-radar destination. For this community, integration is as much about daily life as it is about looking ahead. The growth of the “Little Saigon” areas is steadfast, its boundaries unmarked. The same might be said about the greater San Jose area, which continues to climb in tech, in food, and in culture. America has always been shaped by its immigrants, and is never separate from its immigrant cultures. The expanding Vietnamese and Vietnamese American communities in San Jose are further evidence of that. And whether you go to Story Road or Tully Road or stop somewhere in between, there’s no better way than to experience this than through food. ■

Pho, banh xeo, che — and more.

Snack shops, comfort food, and a noodle soup empire.

Stories on the origins of this Vietnamese community.

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National museum of american history acquires marcella hazan culinary tools.

Marcella Hazan, courtesy of Victor Hazan.

Marking the centennial of Marcella Hazan’s (1924–2013) birth, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History has received a donation from the family of the influential cookbook author and legendary teacher of regional Italian cuisine in the United States and United Kingdom. Hazan is widely known for her six cookbooks on the cuisines of Italy, published between 1973 and 2004. Her husband Victor Hazan, an authority on Italian food and wine, and son Giuliano, a chef and cooking teacher, donated 20 of her specialized Italian cooking tools, including a passatelli press, garganelli pasta comb, a mattarello for rolling out pasta, her wood cutting board, lasagna pan and her cotton apron to the museum’s food history collections. The donation also includes a selection of her recipe notebooks, written in Italian, that will be housed in the museum’s Archives Center.

“As the nation’s flagship history museum, home to the beloved Julia Child’s kitchen, we explore and share the wonderfully vast and complicated intersections of history and food,” said Anthea M. Hartig, the museum’s Elizabeth MacMillan Director. “Understanding the richness of our culinary traditions alongside the complexities of the nation’s past helps us make sense of contemporary experiences and enables us to move forward and create a better shared future.”

“Through her popular books, Marcella Hazan introduced American and British cooks to a wide range of ingredients, culinary techniques and regional dishes at a time when many in the U.S. had no understanding of the diversity of Italian cuisines,” said museum curator Paula Johnson. “Her story is one of diligence and excellence, and we are thrilled that her legacy will be preserved in our national collections through these objects.”

“We are elated that Marcella’s life work, her tools, her recipes, notes and books have found a home in the permanent collections at the Smithsonian,“ Victor Hazan said. “Some of the tools that were knocking about Marcella’s kitchen had also knocked about her mother’s kitchen, and previously, in her grandmother’s, but as Marcella said the best kitchen tools are a cook’s hands, which was a bold statement from a woman whose right hand became deformed and limited in use after a childhood accident.”

Hazan’s cooking style was influenced by her upbringing in the fishing village of Cesenatico, Italy. The produce from her family’s garden and fresh fish inspired her lifelong quest for fresh ingredients while she also practiced the Italian style of simple, efficient approaches to cooking and eating. Hazan immigrated to the United States with her husband in 1955, and they made their home in New York City where she opened a small cooking school in her apartment in 1969 and published her first cookbook, The Classic Italian Cookbook, in 1973. Through her cookbooks, she introduced readers to the structure of the traditional Italian meal and to dishes and techniques largely unknown outside of Italy; she used ingredients such as balsamic vinegar and pesto and explained how to make fresh pasta. Hazan was the recipient of numerous awards, including the International Association of Culinary Professionals Lifetime Achievement Award (2004), Cavaliere della Stella della Solidarietà Italiana Award (2003) and the James Beard Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award (2000).

About the Museum

Through incomparable collections, rigorous research and dynamic public outreach, the National Museum of American History seeks to empower people to create a more just and compassionate future by examining, preserving and sharing the complexity of our past. The museum, located on Constitution Avenue N.W., between 12th and 14th streets, is open daily except Dec. 25, between 10 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. Admission is free. The doors of the museum are always open online and the virtual museum continues to expand its offerings, including online exhibitions, PK–12 educational materials and programs. The public can follow the museum on social media on Instagram and Facebook . For more information, go to https://americanhistory.si.edu . For Smithsonian information, the public may call (202) 633-1000.

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Valeska Hilbig

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Melinda Machado

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Sasha Velour sashays into the culture wars

The champion drag queen — prepping a stage show and starring in a tv series — confronts the people who want to ban her.

NEW YORK — This past August, in Murfreesboro, Tenn., the drag queen Sasha Velour shook the hands of a pair of anti-drag activists, as TV cameras recorded. Velour was dressed in head-to-toe silver, looking like an art deco skyscraper, with red lips, contoured cheeks and catlike eyeliner. The activists — a bearded father and his teenage daughter — called her “sir.” They said that “God created man with a penis” and “woman with a vagina.” They referenced the Bible and referred to “the LGBTQ religion” as a “cult.” They told her: “Something’s wrong with you.”

Velour invoked the separation of church and state. She talked about the “variety in terms of chromosomal gender.” She added: “There’s nothing immoral about loving someone.”

Velour parried ignorant comments with a firm politeness, like a lawyer disarming a hostile witness. She never lost her composure. “To us,” she gently told the activists, “this sounds like hatred.”

This encounter takes place in the third episode of the new season of HBO’s “We’re Here,” a reality series in which drag queens visit small-town America and face stereotypical resistance from locals (the show returns to Max on April 26). She was a long way from New York, where her art is revered, her shows sell out, and she is developing a stage show with Broadway ambitions.

To some drag fans, Velour may not have seemed like the most obvious queen to send to the front lines of the culture wars. The winner of Season 9 of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” in 2017, Velour is known for her highbrow, cerebral interpretation of drag, and for her reveals — drag lingo for little surprises built into a performance. Hers is the kind of drag that feels like true performance art, not like an appetizer for a boozy brunch.

The protests she encountered while filming the show felt “like drag, in its own way,” she would say later. “They dress up, they put on their red hats,” and put on “demented, wrong drag, where it’s like you’re performing something, and there’s no acknowledgment that it’s a performance. And it’s really designed to make people feel unsafe and weak and small” — unlike real drag, which, at its best, makes the crowd (and the performer) feel joyful and empowered.

So Velour stood strong and tall, towering in heels over the pair of activists.

“I’m grateful that this young woman and her father want to speak with us,” Velour said to the TV cameras, “but it doesn’t feel like they really want to have a conversation. They’re not going to hear us.”

I n one America, drag is practically illegal. In another, it’s never been more mainstream. Some drag artists get picketed and threatened with arrest, while others get Super Bowl commercials and Emmy Awards. The emotional and geographical distance between the two is growing depressingly distant.

Velour, 36, has become a traveler between these disparate lands. Having reached an echelon of drag fame below only RuPaul, Velour could have stayed ensconced in New York, leaving only to play sold-out crowds on her national and European tours. She’s doing those things, too, but she’s also fighting with conservatives for her freedom of expression, and for the rights of queer people in small towns.

Six months later and 900 miles away from Murfreesboro, Velour is sitting in her art-filled Brooklyn home with her Italian greyhound, Vanya, lounging nearby. Her partner, Johnny, is upstairs with covid. This return to reality TV is a move that Velour joked about dreading in the intro to her 2023 memoir and drag history book, “The Big Reveal.”

Will such a move make a difference? Could a performance amid people who hate her art change their hearts and minds about it? She demurred.

“If anything,” Velour says, “I think our ability to be visible on TV is a reflection of the work activists do on the ground to shift culture and to change up institutions, and to illuminate for powerful people where their blind spots are.”

A few days prior, at a rehearsal space in Times Square, a group of powerful people (i.e. potential investors) was prepared to open their wallets for her theatrical project, a drag history that also explores how she went from Alexander Hedges Steinberg — the theatrical, vampire-obsessed queer child of academics in Urbana, Ill. — to Sasha Velour, drag superstar.

The show, opening in San Diego in August , is based on Velour’s book, which traces drag from ancient shamanistic ritual to Elizabethan theater and Chinese opera.

Director Moisés Kaufman — who considers Velour “one of the best performers of her generation” — introduced the presentation, standing before a makeshift white curtain that looked like bedsheets. “Everything you see has been made with spit and glue,” Kaufman told attendees. “If something crashes, that’s drag.”

But Velour’s drag is not ad hoc or ramshackle. It is precise, considered, sharpened to a knife’s edge. She emerged through those bedsheet-curtains and stretched a spike-heeled foot to the sky. She wore a showgirl headdress and was surrounded by a video projection of four versions of Sasha Velour — making her, in effect, her own backup dancers. Then she competed with these avatars for the spotlight in increasingly comic and then aggressive ways. They spilled virtual marbles and tripped her, trying to sabotage her act. She pushed them back behind the curtain. They closed in on her. She let out, to the tune of Aerosmith’s “Dream On,” a lip-synced scream.

“Our art literally gets criminalized,” she says during another number. “Our voices, often discredited. But not tonight.”

E very good drag show has a reveal, and every reveal contains a greater truth. So it’s tempting to view the offstage version of Sasha Velour as the real Sasha Velour — sans makeup, wearing a black turtleneck and angular glasses, looking like she’s about to teach a college course on neo-expressionism.

With drag queens, everyone will “focus on unmasking the person and seeing, you know, who they really are,” Velour says at home. “There’s something kind of faulty about that.” Many people, she says, find out who they really are through drag, through fantasy.

Velour began to find that through her grandmother Dina, a Ukrainian immigrant to San Francisco and failed actress, who encouraged a young Velour to dress up in dramatic costumes and perform skits. Velour’s father taught Russian history, and her mother edited a scholarly journal. They were supportive of their child’s sexuality and drag ambitions, and Velour’s book praises their “seriously good parenting.” The influence of their academic rigor can be seen throughout her book, which delves into unheralded gender-non-conforming performers in history, including Barbette (a 1920s drag aerialist), Coccinelle (a French actress who, in 1958, underwent gender-affirming surgery), and Washington’s own William Dorsey Swann (a former enslaved person known as the “queen of drag”).

Velour entered the pantheon herself because of three simple, perfect reveals in the semifinals of “Drag Race” Season 9, which aired five chaotic months into the presidency of Donald Trump , but before Republicans focused their sights on queer literature and drag.

Velour was considered the avant-garde underdog against her competitor, Shea Couleé, who had won more challenges that season. But as soon as they started to lip-sync Whitney Houston’s “So Emotional,” Velour ran away with the show. She began to rip the petals off a rose, mouthing the lyrics with a snarl. At the first emotional crest of the song — “I get so emotional, baby” — she plucked off an elbow-length glove and unleashed an arching spray of hidden rose petals. She teased off the other glove, burlesque-style, as the second verse began, sending up another burst of petals. When the song reached its climax, she lifted her crimson wig, arms quivering, to unleash a cascade of petals onto her signature shaved head — a tribute to her mother, who died of cancer in 2015.

Most “Drag Race” reveals had, until this point, consisted of ripping off a dress to display another outfit underneath, or taking off a long wig to reveal a short one — a neat trick, but one that didn’t capture the emotional catharsis of a song, or reinterpret it entirely. Velour’s “So Emotional” wasn’t about the romantic swell of love; it was about out-of-control obsession, vulnerability and savagery. In her 1987 music video, Whitney Houston smiled and cooed her way through “So Emotional.” When Velour lip-synced the song, she sneered and raged and flared her eyes. She field-dressed a bubbly pop song into a meaty, manic breakdown.

The rose petals were one reveal within a larger reveal. The audience, electrified, leaped to its feet.

W ithin 24 hours of her arrival in Murfreesboro, seven years after her win, someone shouted the age-old slur — “F-----s!” — at Velour and one of her co-stars, Priyanka, a winner of the Canadian version of “Drag Race.”

“Thank you,” Velour replied. “I love that word!”

Despite her impervious reply, shooting episodes of “We’re Here” brought Velour back to her teenage years, living in a small town, being the only gay person she knew. She was used to online trolls, in 2023, but to hear hateful words directly, to her face, after so much progress?

“That was pretty new for me,” Velour says.

The life of a modern drag queen: caught between abject adoration and casual degradation.

When they meet her, fans sometimes pull off wigs and shower the floor with petals, and Velour is always polite, even though it’s equivalent to, say, a person performing a scene from “Kramer vs. Kramer” in front of Meryl Streep (“It’s sweet,” Velour says, diplomatically).

Early seasons of “We’re Here,” which premiered in 2020, could be summed up with a pithy elevator pitch: “Queer Eye,” but for drag. Queens traveled the states, performed makeovers on queer locals and allies, shared bittersweet personal stories, and finished the episode off with a joyous drag show.

Then came the drag bans. “We’re Here” creators Stephen Warren and Johnnie Ingram decided that the show needed to change its format. Season 4 spends more time in two communities — Murfreesboro and Bartlesville, Okla. — that had effectively banned drag in public, at least for a time (Murfreesboro’s ban was repealed in December; Bartlesville’s one-year restriction expired this month).

When Velour was announced as a new cast member, Steve Morris, a political reporter, wrote dryly on Twitter: “Sasha Velour asking rural southerners if they’ve read Judith Butler.” The implication was that Velour — who had considered impersonating the famous gender-studies scholar on “Drag Race” — was too erudite to connect with “real Americans,” and it wasn’t really fair to either party; Oklahomans and Tennesseans read gender theory, too.

But the perception of Velour has always been that of a highbrow academic. She studied literature at Vassar. She received a Fulbright Scholarship to study public art and urban identity in Moscow. She is fluent in Russian. Her book notes that her favorite philosopher is the Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, who believed that a single person exists beyond definition — particularly definitions imposed by external forces.

Velour even illustrated a cover of the New Yorker with her own face — she has an MFA in cartooning — and told the magazine that “the most ‘revolutionary’ aspect of drag isn’t this act of dressing up against the rules; it’s the way we use this no-bulls--- philosophy to stand up for what is right.”

To people who don’t really know Sasha Velour, “she comes across like an art piece that should be hanging in a museum, you know?” says Priyanka.

The Sasha Velour in “We’re Here” may soften that perception. The reveal is that she makes a great drag mother, as mentors are called within a community where many performers are rejected by their own families. She is behind some of the show’s moments of tenderness, such as accompanying a newly transitioning woman on a trip to buy her first wig.

But the producers, aware of her stiletto-sharp mind, also deployed her to interact with bigots. Velour is the queen who parses a Murfreesboro ordinance, to understand the legal definition of “prurient interests.” In August, the cast attended a Murfreesboro city council meeting on this “decency” legislation. The experience shook Velour.

During the meeting, Priyanka said that Velour was “breathing so heavily. And I was like, ‘Are you okay?’ And she’s like, ‘I’m just getting so overwhelmed because I cannot believe what I’m seeing.’”

“We’re Here” draws parallels between drag and other forms of dress-up and fantasy, such as pro wrestling and the child beauty-pageant circuit (the latter actually sexualizes minors, Velour notes). And, of course, there is the protesters’ American flag drag — as symbolic and ostentatious as any sequined, high-haired, RuPaul-ready outfit.

Aren’t we all performing, though, regardless of whether we’re on or off a stage? We put on different faces for friends, family, work. We reveal ourselves in our own ways, sometimes through a glance, sometimes through a joke, sometimes through a protest. We dress for the role, and the role is ever-changing and incomplete.

As Bakhtin wrote in 1929 : “Nothing conclusive has yet taken place in the world.”

Or as RuPaul famously said: “We’re all born naked, and the rest is drag.”

The cast and producers of “We’re Here” have no idea how the people in these communities will react to the show, but Velour gets the last word. The season’s final scene takes place in an Oklahoma church not far from the town where Nex Benedict, a nonbinary teenager, died in February after intense bullying (their death was ruled a suicide by the state medical examiner). Velour’s performance in the church culminates in what might be her greatest reveal yet. It’s not a prop surprise, like a flurry of rose petals, or the inversion of a famous song. The reveal is meant to make an entire community — an entire country, really — confront itself.

Will anyone hear the message? Will it change anything?

“I don’t think entertainment is enough,” Velour says, at her dining room table in Brooklyn. But “I think the emotional impact on the audience can be really profound.” Profound enough to save a life, she adds. So the answer, actually, is yes.

In Judaism, Velour’s religion, one who saves a single life has saved the whole world, according to the Talmud. And Velour, according to her own book — and aligned with the philosophy of Bakhtin — supposes that a single life is only truly perceptible when it’s over.

“The biggest reveal,” she writes, “is death.”

When asked at home to elaborate, Velour reveals a bit more: “I’ve always been compelled by the idea that our afterlife is how our story gets told and how we’re remembered, and that we give people an afterlife by remembering them and telling their story.”

A n hour before a February show at Le Poisson Rouge, in Greenwich Village, Velour was washing her makeup sponges, surrounded by a trio of pink wigs. When she was coming onto the scene, years earlier, she felt pushback against alternative forms of drag. Now it feels like experimental drag is mainstream drag.

Near Velour’s dressing room, a D.C. drag king named King Molasses trimmed a luxuriously thick faux beard. “‘NightGowns’ is a North Star for so many of us,” said Molasses, referring to Velour’s monthly revue, which for nine years has given guest stars a chance to tell their own stories, often through drag that is abstract, experimental or just plain bizarre.

A drag show at a bar, where performers work for tips, isn’t the best environment for true artistry or adventure, said Sapphira Cristál, a finalist on the current season of “Drag Race,” as she was getting ready backstage.

But when Sasha Velour is the curator, Sapphira says, “we get to feel like true artists, and be respected that way.”

A trained opera singer, Sapphira’s second “NightGowns” performance that night was a confrontational lip-sync about black femininity, to Danielle Brooks’s “Black Woman.”

Nymphia Wind, another finalist on the current season of “Drag Race,” began her lip-sync to “Take It All,” from the musical “Nine,” like a typical burlesque number, with backup dancers. But it became a balletic assault — a commentary on violence against the queer community. The dancers stripped off Nymphia’s clothes and carried her limp body. And then she began a dreamy, sinewy dance to FKA Twigs’ “Mothercreep” that ended with her being draped in a sheet, like a corpse, or a ghost.

Death: the biggest reveal.

Addressing the rapt, sold-out crowd at Le Poisson Rouge later that night, Velour proclaimed that notion as her guiding light.

“My only spiritual belief, really, is that by dressing up in drag, we connect with the generations that came before us,” she said from the stage, dressed in a shimmery caftan. We “put on drag sometimes as protest, sometimes as community, sometimes as a little hustle. Always as art.”

Shot at Love Studios . Makeup by Velour. Styling by Willyum Beck . Velour wears dresses by Quine Li and Attico, shoes by Pleasers and models own, jewelry by Robert Sorrell and Misho, gloves by Wing & Weft, mask by Lory Sun.

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