Presented by The Council of VMFA, the 12th Fine Arts & Flowers features floral interpretations of masterpieces from the permanent collection, presented by members of The Garden Club of Virginia, the Virginia Federation of Garden Clubs, and Garden Clubs of Virginia. This four-day fundraising exhibition combines fine art with floral mastery for a dazzling exhibition of beauty and creativity.

Maps of the floral exhibit placements will be available at Visitor Services.

 Presented by The Council of VMFA

Floral designs by members of the Garden Club of Virginia, Virginia Federation of Garden Clubs, and Garden Clubs of Virginia.

Barnes & Diehl, P.C.
Charles Schwarzschild Jeweler, Inc.
James River Air Conditioning Company
Lewis T. Stoneburner, Attorney
Mark Franko Custom Building
Middleburg Bank & Middleburg Trust Company
Riverfront Investment Group, LLC
Stoever & Palmore Investment Group of Wells Fargo Advisors
Westminster Canterbury Richmond

ADC Direct
Azzurro Ristorante
Caspari, Inc.
Chippenham Pediatrics
Costen Floors
EDC Commercial Construction
First Capital Bank
Fraiche on the Avenues
Gastrointestinal Specialists, Inc.
Handcraft Cleaners
Janet Brown Interiors
K2 Trophies & Awards, LLC MED, Inc.
Alex & Joy Paoletto
Porter Realty Company, Inc.
The Davey Tree Expert Company
The Hermitage at Cedarfield
Virginia Society of Landscape Designers
Westwood Pharmacy

Signs and protests were inseparable in the 1960s. Like a visual bullhorn, they both amplified and unified the voices fighting injustice. This exhibition includes photographs that feature protest signs, as well as images of the larger culture of resistance surrounding them, with an emphasis on Civil Rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Stokely Carmichael.

Japanese woodblock artist Kawase Hasui (1883–1957) was primarily a landscape artist and rarely produced works featuring other subjects. However, in 1935 he designed a series of woodblock prints that focused on traditional Japanese dolls, including Imperial Palace dolls, known as gosho ningyo. That same year, the 24 ningyo prints in this series were published in an album entitled Japanese Dolls: Gosho Ningyo by Meiji-Shobo. The twelve prints on display at VMFA were selected from the album, donated by René and Carolyn Balcer.

This exhibition sheds new light on a common, but often overlooked aspect of British art: the British Sporting Print. Highly sought after during the 18th and 19th centuries, these prints endure as symbols of English culture.

Featuring more than 100 prints, Catching Sight demonstrates the aesthetic sophistication and accomplishments of the genre. The exhibition takes an innovative approach to the subject, examining these works of art from an art historical perspective rather than simply as documents of the history of sport and rural culture.

By focusing on the visual language of Sporting Prints, Catching Sight demonstrates the qualities of directness, vividness, and even wit for which the genre was prized by both the larger public and artists such as Degas and Géricault, who borrowed extensively from its artistic vocabulary.

Catching Sight: The World of the British Sporting Print is accompanied by a lavishly illustrated catalogue by Mitchell Merling, Paul Mellon Curator, with contributions from Malcolm Cormack, Paul Mellon Curator Emeritus, and Corey Piper, former Curatorial Associate for the Mellon Collection.

This display of approximately 30 drawings, prints, posters, porcelain, and books by the Anglo-American artist Clare Leighton (1898–1989) comes from a local and rarely seen private collection. Born and raised in Great Britain, she moved to America in 1939, residing first in Maryland, then North Carolina, and finally in Connecticut. Leighton occupied a central position in the Arts and Crafts revival of British wood engraving and its related developments in America. Her book illustrations set a new standard in commercially produced literature, while her writing revived interest in early-to-mid-century rural culture. As the first woman to produce a study of the art of wood engraving (Wood-Engraving and Woodcuts, 1932), Leighton played a key role in popularizing the medium. This exhibition, which complements a larger display of Leighton’s work at the University of Richmond’s Harnett Museum of Art, includes examples of her watercolors, government posters, and wood engravings for novels by Thomas Hardy as well as volumes on southern and New England country life. It is organized for VMFA by Chief Curator and Cochrane Curator of American Art Sylvia Yount.

Whether they ripped the photograph, distressed the negative, or painted on the surface of the print, many photographers in the 1970s and 80s intentionally disrupted the illusion of reality in their work, emphasizing the fragility of representation. Others left the picture intact, yet used obvious studio-set environments, in addition to costume and make-up, to reveal the construction of their photographic subjects. In either case, whether tearing-down or building-up, these photographers focused on the artificial nature of image-making itself.

From Thomas Barrow’s fractured landscapes to Cindy Sherman’s theatrical singer, Unreal: Conceptual Photographs from the 1970s and 80s features approximately 17 photographs from VMFA’s collection to highlight a particularly self-reflexive moment in late 20th-century art. It is curated by Dr. Sarah Eckhardt, Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Altria is the presenting sponsor.

Visions from the Congo: Ancestral Contact: This special two-part installation of sculpture bears witness to the vitality of Congolese art from the past and the inspiration it provides to artists in the present. The first section features four sculptures by artists from the Pende culture, of the Congo’s Kwilu and Kasai regions that relate to the wrenching disruptions experienced by the Pende in the early 20th century during the Belgian colonial period.

The second part of Visions from the Congo features life-size sculptures by contemporary African American artists Renée Stout and Alison Saar, both of whom draw from African art and culture in creating their works. This installation is curated by Richard Woodward, VMFA curator of African art and complements the exhibition Environment and Object – Contemporary African Art at VCU’s Anderson Gallery.