Science Museum of Virginia Foundation, Inc.

At 76 feet, The Dome is the largest screen in Virginia. Whether you’re traveling deep into the Amazon rainforest, plunging into the ocean with great white sharks, hunting for dark matter at a particle physics laboratory or traveling to the cosmos in search of the new ninth planet, seeing an astronomy presentation or giant screen film in The Dome provides the ultimate “you are there” experience.

The planetarium provides a powerful, dynamic tool for our astronomers to use to help curious-minded guests of all ages connect to the world and beyond.

All Dome features are approximately 45 minutes.

The Science Museum of Virginia has partnered with Virginia Voice to create recorded audio descriptions for select Giant Screen Films and Planetarium Shows in the Dome theater. Audio description is an additional narration track that verbally describes what is happening on the screen during pauses in dialogue. Audio description is accessible for guests who are blind or low vision through a receiver. If you would like to check out a receiver, notify Guest Services when you purchase your Dome ticket: https://smv.org/visit/accessibility/blind-and-low-vision/

The Dome theater is equipped with closed and open captions for select features to assist guests who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. Contact us to learn about captioning options for your feature of interest. Please contact Guest Services in the lobby to make arrangements at least one hour before your show time: https://smv.org/visit/accessibility/deaf-and-hard-hearing/

For more than 40 years, the Science Museum of Virginia has served as a community gathering place, a leader in informal learning practices, and a resource for STEM education. Guests of all ages can explore 205,000 sq. ft. of exhibits, teaching labs, live science demonstrations, a Science-on-a-Sphere® presentation platform, and the world’s most advanced digital Dome theater. We are committed to making our programs accessible to all.

Our partnerships with youth agencies empower vulnerable children and teens to create solutions for collective impact in their own lives and neighborhoods and provide access to technical skills and mentors necessary for success in a digital economy. Programming enriches out of school hours with STEM-based activities that foster teamwork, critical thinking, problem solving, and students’ sense of themselves as competent learners while reinforcing principles they learn in school. Our ongoing relationship with Groundwork RVA, which provides training for Richmond Public School teens from low resource communities to achieve career success in the green workforce, earned the 2020 Metropolitan Business League Outstanding Partnership Award. Our Institute of Museum and Library Services grant-funded work with Groundwork RVA includes jointly investigating air quality in the teens’ own historically underserved neighborhood to inform city planning efforts and develop solutions.

Our virtual field trips, which include live science demonstrations — such as Cow Eye and Heart Dissections — and engineering challenges, such as Build a Better Parachute, are aligned with Virginia Standard of Learning (SOL) standards and support the development of the Virginia Department of Education’s “Profile of a Virginia Graduate” — an individual who is a critical and creative thinker, excellent communicator, collaborator, and community-minded citizen.

Our annual Girls in Science and Girls in Medicine Camp-Ins for middle school girls demonstrate our commitment to closing the STEM gender gap. Programming for adults includes our free weekly Lunch Break Science speaker series and Science on Tap, an evening event for the 18+ crowd that is especially popular with millennials.

The Center for IDEAs (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility) at the Science Museum of Virginia is an internal working group that evolved to meld the work of the Museum's Science Within Reach initiative, which builds partnerships with community organizations to ensure access to science for all, with training from the Cultural Competency Learning Institute (https://community.astc.org/ccli/home) into an active exploration and application of a DEAI lens to all aspects of the Museum, including staff interaction, policy development, hiring and recruitment, exhibits, social media, and outreach activities. They intend for DEAI insight to become ingrained and as natural as scientific integrity.

The Museum is committed to being an accessible and inclusive community resource.

As a participant in the national Museums for All program, we offer deeply reduced admission/family memberships to guests who qualify for an electronic benefits transfer card, an indicator of low income: https://smv.org/get-involved/membership/museums-all-memberships/

We underwrite field trip visits for students from Title 1 schools.

We have partnered with Commonwealth Autism and the Autism Society of Central Virginia to provide our staff with disability-specific training. To help guests with autism spectrum and sensory concerns prepare for their visit to the Museum, we provide our Social Narrative and Sensory Friendly Curiosity Guide: https://smv.org/visit/accessibility/autism-spectrum-and-sensory-concerns/ We also worked with the Autism Society of Central Virginia to create sensory backpacks, which include noise-cancelling headphones, sensory fidget toys, sunglasses, a magnifying glass, and activity sheets with crayons. Sensory backpacks can be checked out for free from the Guest Services desk. Guests who would like to check out a backpack need to leave a form of ID, which will be returned once the backpack is returned to the Guest Services desk.

A free, sensory friendly evening event at the Museum, Minds of All Kinds offers a less crowded museum experience, as well as hands-on activities that will pique the curiosity of the young at heart of all ages. Minds of all Kinds events are held multiple times throughout the year: https://smv.org/visit/accessibility/minds-all-kinds/

The Science Museum of Virginia has partnered with Virginia Voice to create recorded audio descriptions for select Giant Screen Films and Planetarium Shows in the Dome theater. Audio description is an additional narration track that verbally describes what is happening on the screen during pauses in dialogue. Audio description is accessible for guests who are blind or low vision through a receiver. If you would like to check out a receiver, notify Guest Services when you purchase your Dome ticket. For a listing of which films offer audio description, please contact us: https://smv.org/visit/accessibility/blind-and-low-vision/

The Dome theater is equipped with closed and open captions for select features to assist guests who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. Contact us to learn about captioning options for your feature of interest. Please contact Guest Services in the lobby to make arrangements at least one hour before your show time.

ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation often provides the most effective communication for people who are deaf. An interpreter can be arranged to provide tours of the Museum or supplement any of the Museum’s performances. Please make arrangements for an interpreter at least two weeks prior to your visit by contacting us.

Various locations throughout the Museum are equipped with assistive listening technology, including the Dome Theater, Dewey Gottwald Center, and Barbara Thalhimer Theater. Please visit Guest Services to check out a receiver.

Free admission for a paid Personal Care Assistant (PCA) accompanying a guest with a severe disability who needs the PCA’s assistance due to that disability is covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The guest may request a free admission for the PCA at the Guest Services desk in the Museum lobby, and the PCA will receive, free of charge, the same admission pass that was purchased by the guest.

Service animals are welcome on all levels of the Museum.

Since 1977, the Science Museum of Virginia has served as Virginia’s flagship for informal science learning, engaging audiences in STEM principles and processes through experiences that inform real-world solutions and practices. We developed a core strength in fostering climate change literacy and awareness of resilience strategies through cutting-edge communication platforms; creation of original, digital educational content related to Virginia resilience; public workshops; and a lecture series.

The Museum is currently developing a new urban greenspace on the site of its historic flagship. The project reclaims two acres of asphalt parking to re-envision the full front acreage along the busy Broad Street corridor as a new civic gathering space. True to our mission to inspire Virginians to enrich their lives through science, we are developing our urban greenspace through the lens of science — employing creative soil use and biodiverse Virginia native trees and grasses along with beneficial naturalized species to reduce urban heat, manage stormwater, and create a living laboratory that incorporates and localizes best practices in environmental resilience for Richmond.

The Green at the Science Museum of Virginia will amplify lessons learned through our communication platforms and our own climate science research — including our 2017 Urban Heat Vulnerability Assessment, which has informed the city’s Richmond 300 master plan, and Museum-led citizen science efforts to document air quality around our campus — to offer a highly visibly model of green infrastructure in transforming an urban setting. This project will provide access to the only greenspace along the GRTC Pulse Bus Rapid Transit corridor. The park will provide ecological, health, and social benefits that will enhance the community’s resiliency and connectedness.