Two of the South Asian galleries are filled with nearly 50 paintings from the collection of Drs. Shantaram and Sunita Talegaonkar, who for decades have supported Indian art at VMFA. Assembled over nearly 25 years, these paintings represent the Talegaonkars’ yearnings both to investigate connections to their own heritage and to explore commonalities among the multiple cultures their lives have traversed.

The show’s thematic arrangement encourages the viewer to consider images created across periods and places. A prelude in the first gallery features the collectors’ first acquisition: a set of paintings depicting musical modes. The exhibition then continues with illustrations from narrative texts, devotional religious images, paintings considering romantic love, and finally historical portraits and genre scenes.

Subthemes emerge within these loosely organized sections, sometimes extending between them, but when viewed broadly, the Talegaonkar collection especially gives shape to the political and artistic landscape of 18th- and 19th-century India, when the subcontinent became increasingly fragmented into rival states. This vision of a decentralized courtly India inspires the exhibition’s title.

Exhibition Highlights

Krishna Offering Lotuses to the Enthroned Radha (detail), second half of 18th century, Rajasthan, Kishangarh, opaque watercolor and gold on paper. Collection of Drs. Shantaram and Sunita Talegaonkar, L2022.10.8

Lessons of the Hour—Frederick Douglass is an immersive and poetic meditation on the great 19th-century abolitionist. The poignant 10-screen film installation collapses time and space to bridge persistent historical and contemporary challenges of the day. In this profoundly resonating art experience of arresting visuals and sound, internationally renowned London-born artist and filmmaker Sir Isaac Julien brings the historical figure to clear focus for the next generation.

Frederick Douglass, who escaped enslavement, was a masterful writer and orator, one of history’s greatest activists for freedom and equality, and an advocate for women’s suffrage. To combat the disparaging depictions of African Americans as a means to justify bondage, Douglass used the power of his image to shift cultural perspectives. In doing so, he became the most photographed individual of the 19th century. In this installation, Julien’s narrative is informed by Douglass’s powerful speeches and includes excerpts from “Lessons of the Hour,” “What to the Slave Is the 4th of July?,” and the prescient “Lecture on Pictures,” which examines the influence of technology and images on human relations. Shakespearean actor Ray Fearon portrays Douglass within the film. Around his commanding visage, Julien weaves Douglass’s writings and filmed reenactments of the abolitionist’s travels in the United States, Scotland, and Ireland, along with contemporary protest footage that makes Douglass’s modern-day relevance and resonance undeniable.

The installation, presented upon the 10 screens where images converge as a whole, then fragment into a montage, can be watched repeatedly. Visitors are welcome to sit in this meditative space where the 25-minute film’s nonlinear viewing experience makes each encounter with the work unique.

Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour—Frederick Douglass was commissioned and acquired by the Memorial Art Gallery with the partnership of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and with generous support from Mark Falcone and Ellen Bruss, the Zell Family, Ford Foundation, VIA Art Fund, Lori Van Dusen, and Deborah Ronnen and Sherman Levey. The commission and acquisition were also made possible by Barbara and Aaron Levine, the Maurice and Maxine Forman Fund, the Marion Stratton Gould Fund, the Herdle-Moore Fund, the Strasenburgh Fund, and the Lyman K. and Eleanore B. Stuart Endowment Fund at the Memorial Art Gallery, and the Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Endowment at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Production of the work was generously supported by Metro Pictures, New York; the Arts Division of the University of California Santa Cruz; Lauri Firstenberg; and by Eastman Kodak Company, on whose film stock the installation was shot. Organized for VMFA by Valerie Cassel Oliver, Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.

Exhibition Highlights

Presented by

Mr. Hubert G. Phipps

Nancy and Wayne Chasen
Mr. and Mrs. R. Augustus Edwards III

Michelle and John Nestler
Michael Schewel and Priscilla Burbank

Marketing support for Evans Court exhibitions is provided by the Charles G. Thalhimer Fund.

This list represents sponsors as of November 1, 2022.

J. P. Ball Studio 1867, Douglass (Lessons of the Hour) (detail), 2019, Isaac Julien (British, born 1960), photograph on gloss inkjet paper mounted on aluminum, 22 ½ x 29 7/8 in. © the artist. Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro.

Born in Tokyo, Kawase Hasui was a master of Japanese landscape prints. He began his journey as an illustrator for books and magazines but soon discovered his heart belonged to printmaking. In 1918, he began creating Shin-hanga (new prints) and designed more than 600 prints during the following 40 years.

This exhibition in the Works on Paper Gallery is curated by Li Jian, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Curator of East Asian Art, and features 14 prints. The works are drawn from René and Carolyn Balcer’s 2017 gift to VMFA. The Balcers have been donating works from their collection to the museum for more than a decade.

IMAGES Morning in Beppu (detail), from the series Japanese Sceneries, 1922, Kawase Hasui (Japanese, 1883-1957), woodblock print; ink and color on paper. René and Carolyn Balcer Collection, 2017.535

Cormorant Fishing, Nagara River (detail), 1954, Kawase Hasui (Japanese, 1883–1957), carved by Namikawa Siezo, printed by Horikawa Shōzaburō, published by Watanabe Shōzaburō (Japanese, 1885–1962), ink and color on paper. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, René and Carolyn Balcer Collection

This exhibition explores the role of sport and physical culture in the lithographs of George Bellows (1882–1925). Bellows, an esteemed early 20th-century realist, is often classified as an Ashcan artist due to the gritty subject matter he usually portrays. Well known for paintings that capture the dynamism and prosaic aspects of urban environments with dark palettes and painterly modeling of form, he achieved similar compositional effects in his vast body of work in lithography. In 1916 he installed a lithography press in his studio, and from then until his untimely death in 1925, he created just under 200 lithographs. Bellows understood that the monochromatic nature of the medium—its striking contrasts of light and shadow—made it an effective means through which to explore the strenuous activities and pastimes so prized by the artist. The strenuous activities of Bellows’s bodies in motion are enhanced by the unique aesthetic of lithography that shows the results of the artist’s hand at work.

Billy Sunday, 1923, George Bellows (American, 1882–1925), lithograph, 15 3/4 x 22 1/2 in. Lent by D. Canter

In 2018, longtime patron D. Canter gave VMFA The Tournament (1920), Bellows’s ambitious composition picturing the Newport Tennis Club, which is also featured in his masterpiece painting Tennis at Newport (1920) that was recently gifted to the museum by James W. and Frances G. McGlothlin. D. Canter is lending an additional 14 lithographs by Bellows in which the artist effectively gives the viewer a front-row view into the worlds of early 20th-century American tennis, swimming, calisthenics, and, especially, boxing—which was illegal in New York City when the artist made A Stag at Sharkey’s (1917), his most esteemed print, picturing a saloon, that also functioned as a boxing club, owned by Tom Sharkey. With the ropes removed from the foreground, Bellows immerses the viewer into the frenzied action. Also on view is Bellows’s lithograph Billy Sunday (1923), picturing the former professional baseball player, turned traveling evangelist, and who, with his spread legs, cocked-back hand, and pointing finger, resembles an umpire calling out a base-runner.

By the time he was twenty years old, photographer Robert H. McNeill had already completed an important photo essay on the plight of domestic workers in New York City. His series of thirteen photographs, which was published in Flash, a “weekly newspicture magazine” for African American readers, caught the attention of Howard University professor Sterling Brown. At the time, Brown was supervising an unprecedented project supported by the New Deal’s Federal Writers’ Project that sought to record the complete history of African American life in the Commonwealth of Virginia, from the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in 1619, to the present day. Unsatisfied with the images of African Americans he had already procured, Brown reached out to McNeill hoping he could gain access to communities that were wary of white photographers with government credentials.

Published in 1940, The Negro in Virginia featured eight of the hundreds of photographs McNeill captured as part of this project. This exhibition contains some of those images with other unpublished photographs that demonstrate McNeill’s interest in the people who lived and worked in segregated communities. Though he was not given explicit instructions about what subjects to photograph, McNeill later recalled, “I understood what they wanted were pictures of people at work, pictures that would show the soul of people in their jobs.” While deftly avoiding both stereotypes and propaganda, McNeill’s photographs are incisive portraits of Virginians in their homes, places of work, and communities.

This exhibition features 12 woodblock prints by Japanese landscape artist Kawase Hasui. Documenting the VMFA Member Trip to Japan in May 2018, the selected prints display historical and religious landmarks in cities such as Tokyo, Kanazawa, Kyoto, and Nara, as well as countryside scenes. They are among nearly 700 Hasui prints donated to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts by René and Carolyn Balcer. This exhibition coincides with Reiwa, Japan’s new imperial era that began May 1, 2019. The word reiwa means beauty of harmony.

A Spring Evening at Otemon Gate (detail), Kawase Hasui (Japanese, 1883–1957), woodblock print; ink and color on paper. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, René and Carolyn Balcer Collection A Spring Evening at Otemon Gate (detail), Kawase Hasui (Japanese, 1883–1957), woodblock print; ink and color on paper. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, René and Carolyn Balcer Collection

Kasuga Shrine, Nara, from the series Souvenirs of Travel II (detail), 1921, Kawase Hasui (Japanese, 1883–1957), woodblock print; ink and color on paper. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, René and Carolyn Balcer Collection Kasuga Shrine, Nara, from the series Souvenirs of Travel II (detail), 1921, Kawase Hasui (Japanese, 1883–1957), woodblock print; ink and color on paper. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, René and Carolyn Balcer Collection