The Portsmouth Museums consist of several museum institutions, including the Children’s Museum of Virginia, the Portsmouth Art & Cultural Center, the Portsmouth Community Colored Library Museum, as well as the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum & Lightship Portsmouth Museum.
On August 15th of 2015, they staged an institution-wide event called Builder Fest in conjunction with a traveling exhibit called Young Architects.
Special programming focused on the process of making things from scratch, and the Hampton Roads Ship Model Society was invited to present a display on ship modelling. Lee Martin, Ron Lewis, Marty Gromovsky and Greg Harrington volunteered. We brought along several ship models and examples of ship model tools and techniques borrowed from the model stand at the Mariners’ Museum. Also on hand were a number of paper model kits for the USS Monitor. We gave several away and even got a couple of children started right there at the event (using knives or safety scissors, depending on their age and parents’ comfort level).
