July 25, 2013
The Poetry Society of Virginia recently took an Ekphrastic Day visit to VMFA to write some art-inspired poems. “Ekphrastic” is the poets’ term for poetry inspired by artwork. Below are a couple of poems inspired by our current special exhibition Pop Art and Beyond: Tom Wesselmann. The exhibition ends this Sunday, July 28th, so if…
July 18, 2013
Today is the birthday of Nelson Mandela, Nobel Peace Prize winner and former president of South Africa. He is 95. This is an appropriate time to consider a South African work in VMFA’s collection. Sue Williamson, a South African artist, found this object in a thrift shop. It’s a pass book, and a remnant of…
July 16, 2013
Featuring more of the recently acquired pieces added to your permanent collection at the VMFA by our privately funded acquisition program, these pieces explore forms from small-scale bronze French sculpture to a black cut-paper silhouette depicting America’s racial and gender tensions. For more than a decade, Mrs. Nelson St. Clair Jr. has been enriching VMFA’s…
July 16, 2013
The last feautured new additions to your art collection–attained through our privately supported acquisition program–are of Indian influence, adding to the South Asian collection. The most intriguing of the variously shaped bronze artifacts produced in great quantities in north India during the 3rd through 2nd centuries BCE are those of abstracted humanoid design. How these…
July 9, 2013
Monica Serra, Wesselmann’s longtime studio assistant, model and a country music singer traveled from New York to savor VMFA’s Pop Art and Beyond: Tom Wesselmann retrospective. Serra worked for Wesselmann and now the Wesselmann studio for the past 20 years. How did she snag such a fascinating job? A mutual friend invited her to an…
June 10, 2013
Pieces ranging from the painted glass work of a Virginian painting professor to a photograph documenting the visual traditions of Indian Royalty have recently been added to your art collection at the VMFA. These pieces have been brought to you through the VMFA’s privately supported acquisition program. Richard Roth, a painting professor at Virginia Commonwealth…
June 4, 2013
Through our privately funded aquisition program, VMFA regularly aquires significant pieces to be added to our permanent collection. We welcome you to visit and enjoy recent aquisitions such as these at the museum. This singular pair of girandole mirrors is a spectacular manifestation of decorative arts as sculpture. The unusual inclusion of Native American motifs—arrows,…
May 29, 2013
VMFA is fortunate to have endowed private funds which can only be used for art acquisition. Here are some recent acquisitions currently on view in the galleries. The curators have provided insights about the objects. Elaborate processional crosses made for Ethiopian churches are often inscribed with images and lettering that deepen their message. On this…
April 9, 2013
Today, April 9, 2013, marks the 20th anniversary of the death at the age of 96 of the internationally renowned singer and humanitarian, Marian Anderson. Since my childhood, I had known of Anderson’s great musicality and barrier-shattering reputation as the first African American artist to perform at the White House (in 1936) and sing a…
February 26, 2013
Nearly two-thousand years after his brutal assassination by members of his own bodyguard, Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (popularly known as “Caligula”) has lost his head yet again in an operation performed over the course of several months at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The operation was performed on a full-length marble statue…
