The Museum of the Shenandoah Valley (MSV) is offering healthcare workers free admission from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. on Sunday, November 6, during a Healthcare Workers Appreciation Day.

The event includes special screenings of Wild, Wonderful & Brave: Fighting the Pandemic in the Eastern Panhandle—a digital exhibition that tells the stories of healthcare workers in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle during the COVID-19 pandemic—and at 2 p.m., an informal presentation by MSV Curator of Collections Nick Powers highlighting objects from the Museum’s Collection related to the history of medicine in the Shenandoah Valley. Both the screenings and the talk will take place in the MSV Reception Hall.

Wild, Wonderful & Brave is a 60-minute video presentation featuring powerful documentary photographs and interviews with nurses, doctors, hospice workers, custodians, paramedics, and others working in the healthcare industry from 2020 through mid-2022 in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia.

The digital exhibition was inspired by the Healthcare is Human podcast created and hosted by Dr. Ryan McCarthy, a primary care doctor in Martinsburg, West Virginia, and an associate professor of internal medicine at West Virginia University. In addition to creating a forum where healthcare workers tell their stories, McCarthy collaborated with photographer Molly Humphreys to take candid pictures of these individuals during their workdays. The first Healthcare is Human episode aired in September of 2020 and more than 18 episodes have been produced to date.

Wild, Wonderful & Brave features hundreds of photographs and highlights from podcast interviews with more than 50 healthcare workers. The video illustrates the fear, exhaustion, and perseverance felt by a wide range of people as they worked in the healthcare industry during the pandemic. From a security officer sharing the precautions he took to prevent taking coronavirus home to his family and nurses describing how they comforted isolated patients, to a pharmacist’s hope for the future as a vaccine became available, Wild, Wonderful & Brave provides an inspirational and thought-provoking record of life on the pandemic’s front lines.

According to MSV Director and CEO Dana Hand Evans, the digital display provides important documentation of a Shenandoah Valley community’s journey through the pandemic. “We could think of no better way to share the news about this digital display with the region’s healthcare workers than to thank them for all they do with a free-admission day at the MSV,” says Evans.

Those interested in visiting the MSV for free on November 6 should bring a healthcare employee ID/badge to present at the admissions desk. The free-admission offer applies to healthcare workers only and is not applicable to family members.

Sponsored at the MSV by West Virginia University’s Eastern Campus and WVU Medicine, Wild, Wonderful & Brave was organized and created by the MSV and Corwyn Garman of Experience Art & Exhibitions in partnership with Dr. Ryan McCarthy and photographer Molly Humphreys.

A regional cultural center, the MSV is located at 901 Amherst Street in Winchester, Virginia. The MSV campus includes a galleries building with permanent and rotating exhibitions and a Museum Store, the Glen Burnie House, seven acres of formal gardens, and The Trails at the MSV, a free-admission art park open daily from 7 a.m. to dusk. The galleries and trails are open year-round; the house and gardens are open April through December. More details are available at www.theMSV.org or by calling 540-662-1473, ext. 235.