As embodiments of the African American experience and cultural legacies, the works of art featured in Cosmologies from the Tree of Life: Art from the African American South are rooted in African aesthetic legacies, familial tradition, and communal ethos. Previously marginalized as “folk or self-taught” art, they now take their rightful place as significant contributors to the canon of American Modernism. As artists, they imbued their works with a sense of individualistic style, yet they often embraced shared narratives that spoke to cultural, familial, and communal preoccupations. Employing an impressive breadth of media, the works in Cosmologies from the Tree of Life celebrate their imprint in sculpture, quilting, painting, and works on paper. This exhibition’s works of art were acquired by VMFA from the Atlanta-based Souls Grown Deep Foundation, an organization whose mission it is to showcase works by African American artists from the South. Artists featured in VMFA’s exhibition include Jessie Aaron, Louisiana Bendolph, Thornton Dial, Lonnie B. Holley, Ronald Lockett, Rita Mae Pettway, Jimmy Lee Sudduth, James “Son Ford” Thomas, Mose Tolliver, Purvis Young, and others. An impressive selection of quilts display the unique artistry of the famed multigenerational group of quilt-making women in Gee’s Bend, Alabama.

The Souls Grown Deep Foundation celebrates the invaluable contributions that African American artists have made to art and culture in the United States and beyond. Its mission states that the Foundation is

“dedicated to documenting, preserving, and promoting the contributions of artists from the African American South, and the cultural traditions in which they are rooted. We advance our mission by advocating the contributions of these artists in the canon of American art history, accomplished through collection transfers, scholarship, exhibitions, education, public programs, and publications.”

Since 2014, the Foundation has transferred more than 200 works of art to leading art museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the High Museum. VMFA’s 34 acquisitions add to the museum’s deep holdings of African American art, which are among the largest and finest of any encyclopedic art museum in the country.

Cosmologies from the Tree of Life, which showcases VMFA’s acquisitions from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, gives visitors the opportunity to view these works of art individually and collectively, and to consider their historical roots and their contributions not only to African American art history but also to the larger canon of art in the wake of cultural and social marginalization that their makers endured. The persistence of the artists and the undeniable imprint of their work enable scholars to retrace and, in doing so, reframe American Modernism to embrace such aesthetics rooted in the South and the contributions of these artists. Adding to its significance, the exhibition coincides with American Evolution, commemorating the 400th anniversary of historic events in 1619, including the arrival of the first enslaved African people to Virginia.

A Legacy Project of

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

Sponsored by

Council Exhibition Fund
Fabergé Ball Endowment

IMPEACH, 2006, Donald Moffett (American, 1955), Media Player, speakers (Edition 1 of 3); 2:20 seconds. Collection of the Brooklyn Museum and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Endowment and Aldine S. Hartman Endowment Fund, 2018.223

“Today is a very sad day. . . . This morning when I got up I wanted to cry, but the tears would not come. Before we cast this one little vote, we all should ask the question: is this good for America—if it’s good for the American people—if it’s good for this institution? When I was growing up in rural Alabama during the forties and the fifties as a young child, near a shotgun house where my aunt live, one afternoon an unbelievable storm occurred. The wind start blowing, the rain fell on the tin-top roof of this house. Lightning start flashing. (RAP, RAP) The thunder start rolling. And my aunt ask us all to come into this house and to hold hands. (RAP, RAP) And we held hands. And as the wind continued to blow, we would walk (RAP) to that corner of the house (RAP) that was trying to lift (RAP) and another corner (RAP) that was trying to lift (RAP), and we would walk there. (RAP) We never left the house. (RAP) The wind may blow. (RAP) The thunder may roll. (RAP) The lightning may flash. RAP But we must never leave the American house. (RAP) We must stay together as a family. (RAP) One house. (RAP) One family. (RAP) The American house. (RAP) The American family.”

—Representative John Lewis, D-GA,
December 1998, US Congress,
Impeachment Of President Bill Clinton

Donald Moffett’s sound installation, IMPEACH (2006), is a recording of Rep. John Lewis’s impassioned speech from the floor of the US House of Representatives during President William Clinton’s impeachment hearings in 1998. Speaking metaphorically, the legendary civil rights icon argued against the impeachment of President Clinton and issued a plea for the American family to “stay together” as “one house and as one family.” Rep. Lewis’s speech slowed the congressional proceedings for approximately one minute before the vote was called and the matter was lost.

Congressman John Lewis visits the Confederate Memorial Chapel with VMFA’s Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Valerie Cassel Oliver to hear Donald Moffett’s IMPEACH

The installation consists of speakers and an audio player and required no physical alteration to the Confederate Memorial Chapel, which was built in the aftermath of the Civil War—with funding from the North and South—and served as a nondenominational place of worship for the R. E. Lee Camp Confederate Soldiers’ Home. In the context of this space, Moffett’s immersive sound work speaks to the long history of divisive politics in America and the power of reconciliation.

Exterior view of Confederate Memorial Chapel on the grounds of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Organized by 1708 Gallery, InLight Richmond is a public exhibition of light-based art and performances. This year the setting of this free event is at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. This year’s Inlight features performances, sculpture, video, and interactive projects that illuminate pathways, walls, sidewalks, green spaces, and kicks off with the Community Lantern Parade.

InLight 2018 will take place on Friday, November 16, 2018 from 7 pm to Midnight and on Saturday, November 17, 2018, from 7 – 10 pm, at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. And in recognition of 1708 Gallery’s 40th Anniversary, InLight 2018 will focus on ideas of Community. Recent editorials have described two Richmonds. “RVA” encompasses revitalization, creativity and growth. “Richmond” is divided, challenged, and struggling. Artists are invited to consider this dynamic and to imagine an ideal community—ONE Richmond.

Lantern Making and Community Lantern Parade

InLight 2018 will kick off with the Community Lantern Parade, which will travel around the grounds of the VMFA. Make your own lantern at one of our many lantern making workshops happening around the city leading up the InLight 2018. See the Schedule and locations of workshops. Make sure to bring your lantern back to InLight to walk in the parade. Or join us at 6:00 pm on November 16 + 17 to make one at the event! The parade gathers at 7:00 pm and then begins its procession at 7:30 pm.

Precisionism typically characterizes American paintings and works on paper produced between the two World Wars that employ a linear aesthetic, pronounced contours and localized colors to depict architectural, infrastructural, mechanical and often urban imagery. This exhibition of 18 watercolors, prints, drawings, photographs and paintings from VMFA’s collection demonstrates that this term may also describe work produced before 1915 and after 1945, and that the “impulse” also plays out in rural and non-architectural imagery.

Roof and Steeple, 1921, Charles Demuth (American, 1883–1935), pencil and watercolor on paper. Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund, 86.198

Skyscraper, Chanin Building, 1993, Andrew Bordwin (American, born 1964), gelatin silver print. Gift of M. Holt Massey, 96.120 © Andrew Bordwin

City Arabesque, 1938, Bernice Abbott (American, 1898–1991), gelatin silver print. Floyd D. and Anne C. Gottwald Fund, 2012.2 © Bernice Abbott

Drydock and Repair, 20th century, Edmund D. Lewandowski (American, 1914–1998), casein on paperboard. John Barton Payne Fund, 58.20

The Precisionist Impulse shows that, much as the camera crops, distills angles and exaggerates planes, so the 20th-century landscape provokes awe in some unlikely places.

Curated by Dr. Leo Mazow, Louise B. and J. Harwood Cochrane curator of American art at VMFA.

Cutting across continents, cultures, and a millennium, this installation brings together eighteen objects from VMFA’s permanent collections created in regions where Islam is or has been the dominant religion, or by artists from these places. Some themes recur—the written word, self-awareness, cultural tension—but perhaps most apparent is these works’ great diversity. This cross section of artistic creations from Islam’s sphere of influence is meant to provoke the question whether, and in what ways, we should call them “Islamic Art.”

Page from the “Houghton Shahnama”: The Combat of Giv and Kamus, ca. 1522-1540, Iranian, manuscript ink, transparent and opaque watercolors, gold paint, and gold leaf on wove papers. Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund, 78.121

Calligraphic Album Page, 1606/07, Abdul-Rahim Al-Harawi (Indian, Lahore, present-day Pakistan), ink and opaque watercolor on paper. Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund, 82.128

Talismanic Shirt, 15th-16th century, Indian, North India or Deccan, ink and opaque watercolor on cotton. Robert A. and Ruth W. Fisher Fund, 2000.9

Kalki Confronted, 2003, Gulammohammed Sheikh (Indian, born 1937), opaque watercolor on Arches paper. Kathleen Boone Samuels Memorial Fund, 2003.42

S4M53, 2004, Farhad Moshiri (Iranian, born 1963), oil on canvas. Kathleen Boone Samuels Memorial Fund, and funds given by Dr. and Mrs. G. Dastgir Qureshi and Mary and Donald Shockey Jr., 2004.68

Folio from a Qur’an, 11th-12th century, Probably Egyptian, manuscript ink and opaque watercolor on laid paper. Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Fund, 78.20

Qur’anic Writing Tablet, 19th-20th century, Hausa culture (Nigeria), wood, leather, string, pigment. Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Fund, 95.83

In recognition of the VMFA Fellowship Program’s 75th anniversary, VMFA will exhibit the work of three past Fellowship recipients—Fiona Ross, Pam Anderson Sutherland, and Kendra Wadsworth–at Workhouse Arts Center in Lorton, VA. This exhibition is part of VMFA’s Statewide program, a program in which the museum shares exhibitions and programming with partner organizations throughout the Commonwealth.

Reception on Jun 13, 6 – 9 pm, during the 2nd Saturday Art Walk.

Fiona Ross paints forms in radiant colors that feature both deliberate markings and evaporation markings. Some paintings are layered to create the illusion of three-dimensionality, or painted on the back to intensify colors, while others are created through an accumulation of droplets of paint. Through her work she explores the forces of change through the repeated evaporation and hydration of paints and pigments, and aims to create a feeling of balance and awareness of the constancy of natural forces. She constantly explores the physical boundaries and potential of her materials, from ceramic and concrete, to acrylic paint and watercolor. Her site-specific, large-scale drawing installations feature life-sized self-portraits and landscapes rendered from a single line, forming unicursal labyrinths.

Pam Anderson Sutherland is interested in the space between sentiment and pure formalism. Her works on paper, by appropriating and adding to the collected evidence of her life, pay homage to art’s unique ability to give permanence to the fleeting. Each of these collages contains a named gray paint square (intuitive, ponder, rock bottom) along with a letter i/eye. Autobiography housed in abstract narrative appeals to her. So does the textural juxtaposition of the flat with the dimensional, illusionistic space with the literal object, the drawn with the sculptural.  It is often in the discarded test mark or the scavenged remnants of an art student’s drawer that the story is found, the sentimental suspended in the ordinary.  Sutherland is a collector of minutes and hours, of people and days, of loves and losses, but also of the petty thesaurus scrap that would otherwise end up on the floor. Her art is a conscious organizing of the random, chaotic, or unintentional. It is how she makes sense of the senseless.

Kendra Wadsworth’s work explores the unpredictable nature of existence. Through observing the synchronized rhythms and dimensions of starling murmurations, she attempts to weave a fluidity of motion within stratospheric and geologic planes, changes, and textures.

EXHIBITION VENUE

The Workhouse Arts Center
Building W-16 McGuireWoods Gallery.
Lorton, VA

Showing works by an increasingly diverse roster of global artists, VMFA’s 21st-Century Art Gallery reflects the expanded nature of contemporary art. Fusion, builds on this focus. It emphasizes new acquisitions — many on view for the first time — and includes a substantial number of works by African and African-American artists and works from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Mexico.

Curated by John B. Ravenal, Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.