“Food, Community & Climate on the Eastern Shore” Exhibit Opens at Regional Library

ACCOMAC, Va. — The Eastern Shore of Virginia Regional Library & Heritage Center will open its newest exhibit, “Food, Community & Climate on the Eastern Shore,” on November 15, 2025. The exhibition, which runs through April 30, 2026, invites visitors to explore the region’s deep connections between food traditions, local culture, and environmental change.

Opening day festivities will feature a listening party, lunch, and discussion with exhibit researchers and several of the community members who contributed to the ongoing oral history project.

The project began in 2023, when residents across the Eastern Shore — both long-time locals and newcomers — began sharing stories about food with the Virginia Folklife Program of Virginia Humanities. Through these conversations, researchers have captured the many ways Shore residents eat, harvest, and cook, tracing cultural continuity and change across generations.

The ways we grow and share food here tell the story of who we are, from watermen and gardeners to migrant farmworkers and restaurateurs, everyone’s work contributes to the Shore’s identity and resilience.

The exhibit highlights how food remains central to life on the Eastern Shore — sustaining both cultural traditions and the economy. Agriculture and tourism, the region’s two largest industries, continue to rely on the rhythms of the seasons and the abundance of land and water. Migrant and immigrant communities play a vital role in that cycle, bringing recipes and culinary traditions from Mexico, Vietnam, Haiti, and beyond, while small producers are embracing sustainable farming practices and eco-friendly tourism opportunities such as harvest-your-own oyster tours.

But alongside this abundance, the exhibit explores the growing challenges of climate change. Rising seas, land subsidence, saltwater intrusion, and increasingly severe storms are reshaping how residents work and live. Interviews with farmers, seafood workers, chefs, and market owners reveal how the community is adapting — and what lessons their experiences might offer for future resilience.

The exhibition combines oral histories, photographs, and artifacts to tell the story of how food connects the Eastern Shore’s past, present, and future.

“Food, Community & Climate on the Eastern Shore” will be on view from November 15, 2025, through April 30, 2026, at the Eastern Shore of Virginia Regional Library & Heritage Center in Accomac. Opening day events are free and open to the public.

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Wayne Creed

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