Drawn from the local collection of Margaret and John Gottwald, Making History: 20th Century African American Art explores black artistic production and patronage through art previously in the collection of the Barnett Aden Gallery, an influential private gallery located in Washington, D.C., and among the first with an integrated stable of artists and patrons.

An innovative collaboration between VMFA and VCU’s Museum Studies graduate program, this student-organized exhibition features more than 50 works by 23 renowned and lesser known African American artists once associated with the pioneering Barnett Aden Gallery (1943 – 1969). A cross-section of art by the internationally acclaimed Elizabeth Catlett forms the core of the exhibition.

This special installation highlights an important recent acquisition of American art—Jacob Lawrence’s The Legend of John Brown graphic series. Consisting of twenty-two silk-screen prints, the portfolio is based on Lawrence’s same-size gouache paintings from 1941 (owned by the Detroit Institute of Arts) that explore the life of the controversial abolitionist. In 1977, when the paintings had become too fragile for public display and access, the Detroit museum commissioned Lawrence to reproduce them as limited-edition screen-prints. Each painting was originally displayed with the artist’s accompanying text, which builds on the powerful visual narrative.

Lawrence’s John Brown series was among the historical epics he produced in the 1930s and 1940s focusing on heroic 19th-century figures like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass as well as the Great Migration of the early 20th-century. As Lawrence explained: “The inspiration to paint the Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman and John Brown series was motivated by historical events as told to us by the adults of our community . . . the black community. The relating of these events, for many of us, was not only very informative but also most exciting to us, the men and women of these stories were strong, daring and heroic; and therefore we could and did relate to these by means of poetry, song and paint.” It is for these powerful narratives that Lawrence continues to be most celebrated today.

The first exhibition to explore the extraordinarily rich visual culture of India’s last royal families, Maharaja: The Splendors of India’s Great Kings spans the period from the early 18th century to the mid-20th century, bringing together over 200 magnificent objects. It examines the changing role of the maharajas (“great kings”) within a social and historical context, and reveals how their patronage of the arts, both in India and Europe, resulted in splendid and beautiful objects symbolic of royal status, power and identity.

The power of an Indian king was expressed most spectacularly in the grand public processions that celebrated royal events and religious festivities. Riding a richly ornamented elephant or horse, the ruler was lavishly dressed and jeweled, and surrounded by attendants bearing symbolic attributes of kingship: a royal parasol, fans and staffs of authority. These traditional royal elements mingle with more modern riches, including spectacular commissions from Europe’s most elegant fashion houses, as the exhibition traces the fascinating history of the shifting power between India’s dynasties, the rise of British colonial supremacy, and the move toward Indian independence.

The exhibition is organized by the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and is organized for VMFA by John Henry Rice, Associate Curator of South Asian and Islamic Art.

Maharaja: The Splendors of India’s Great Kings has traveled to select cities outside of London, including Munich, Toronto, and San Francisco. VMFA will be the only east-coast opportunity to view this stunning collection of jewels, armor, decorative arts, paintings and other luxurious royal possessions.

Timed to coincide with the sesquicentennial of the Civil War and Emancipation, VMFA is reprising the exhibition Bold, Cautious, True: Walt Whitman and American Art of the Civil War Era, originally organized by the Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis.

The Richmond reworking of this thought-provoking exhibition, which takes its title from Whitman’s poem “As Toilsome I Wander’d Virginia’s Wood,” showcases one of VMFA’s seminal works—Eastman Johnson’s A Ride for Liberty—The Fugitive Slaves, March 2, 1862—in addition to 29 paintings, sculpture, and rare books from noted public and private collections across the country.

While preserving the central focus of the original exhibition—the layered meanings and moods of 1860s American art as viewed against the poetry of Walt Whitman, one of America’s chief “scribes” of the war—VMFA’s reprise expands the number of featured artists.

By juxtaposing the writings of Whitman with various landscapes and genre scenes by Conrad Wise Chapman, Frederic Church, Robert Duncanson, David Johnson, Winslow Homer, among others, the exhibition encourages a fresh understanding of America’s visual and verbal responses to the national crisis. A fully-illustrated catalogue, published by the Dixon, accompanies the exhibition.

This summer, VMFA will display the top 10 Doodles from young artists in Virginia in our MeadWestvaco Art Education Center. One student artist from each state is competing in Google’s Doodle 4 Google contest to win a $30,000 college scholarship and a $50,000 technology grant for their school.

You’ll be able to vote for your favorite Doodle at http://goo.gl/RcJvF, May 2 – May 10. To ensure the Virginia Doodler becomes the National Winner, be sure to vote today!

The winning Doodle will be displayed on Google’s home page on May 18, 2012.

Many people consider Paris the “cradle of street photography,” a reference to an approach that, loosely defined, focuses on spontaneous images of daily life in urban areas. This exhibition looks at the work of three photographers—each roughly a generation younger than the next—who worked within this tradition while developing their own distinct visions: Robert Doisneau (French, 1912–1994), Édouard Boubat (French, 1923–1999), and Joel Meyerowitz (American, b. 1938). Although these photographers traveled throughout the world, this exhibition features their images of France —primarily those of Paris—as an homage to street photography.

Born in a working-class neighborhood in Paris, Robert Doisneau photographed aspects of the city he knew best and captured what he considered a vanishing way of life. After a few international assignments early in his career, he declined an invitation to join the prestigious international photography cooperative Magnum, explaining that when he worked in other countries, his subjects inevitably looked too exotic. Instead, he chose to emphasize his own local knowledge. “I am part of the environment of Paris. I can be seen with my old cap pressed down around my ears when it’s cold. I am part of the setting. I know it.” Out of this rootedness in one community, he shaped an artistic philosophy that treated the city as a series of cinematic sets:

Often, you find a scene, a scene that is already evoking something—either stupidity, or pretentiousness, or, perhaps, charm. So you have a little theatre. Well, all you have to do is wait there in front of this little theatre for the actors to present themselves. I can stay half a day in the same place. And it’s very rare that I come home with a completely empty bag. (Dialogue with Photography, 1992)

The humor that frequently emerges from Doisneau’s images attests to his familiarity with his environment as well as to his ability to communicate a compelling narrative in a single frame.

Less well known than Doisneau, Édouard Boubat also spent the majority of his life in Paris and was part of the same milieu. Boubat subscribed to a more romanticized notion of chance, describing his approach as reliant on his awareness that a singular photographic moment awaited him. In 1988 he discussed his most famous photograph, The Little Girl with Dead Leaves, which is featured in this exhibition:

One fall morning after the war, I am walking through the Luxembourg Gardens, I meet “The Little Girl with Dead Leaves”; she is there for herself and for me: my first picture awaits me. If I were to go through those gardens year after year I would never meet her again. (Édouard Boubat: Pauses, 1988)

Boubat prided himself on his ability to capture his final image after taking very few pictures (and often just one).

Joel Meyerowitz began photographing American cities in the 1960s alongside Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand, and Diane Arbus. Openly indebted to Robert Frank’s influential The Americans—a gritty portrayal of 1950s America—Meyerowitz also aimed for a certain “toughness” in his images. “Something that came from your gut, out of instinct, raw, of the moment, something that couldn’t be described in any other way.” (Bystander: A History of Street Photography, 1994).

When he turned his camera on the streets of Paris in 1983, Meyerowitz signaled his awareness of the legacy of Doisneau and Boubat, as well the work of two other French photographers who influenced them—Eugène Atget (1857–1927) and Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004). His use of color adds another layer to this photographic tradition, while it also marks a transition to a younger generation.

Flower and fine art combine for a dazzling exhibition of beauty and creativity. Members from more than 75 garden clubs across Virginia interpret masterworks in the collection of VMFA with floral arrangements throughout the galleries.

Fine Arts & Flowers: 2012 Presented by The Council of VMFA.

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

Exhibition DVD
Purchase the Fine Arts & Flowers DVD online!

Official supplier of flowers and plant material:

Gold Sponsors
Barnes and Diehl, P.C.
Cantor, Stoneburner, Ford, Grana & Buckner, PC
McGuireWoods
Middleburg Bank/
Middleburg Trust Company
Richmond Nephrology Associates

Silver Sponsors
Virginia Surgical Associates and
The Vein Center
James River Air Conditioning Company

Bronze Sponsors
Costen Floors
Garden Keepers, Ltd.
Janet Brown Interiors
Kambourian Rugs
MED-Inc.
Porter Realty Company, Inc.
Richmond Plastic Surgeons & Cosmedics at Richmond Plastic Surgeons
The McCammon Group
Stoever & Palmore Investment Group of Wells Fargo Advisors
Virginia Physicians for Women

Media Partner
Style Weekly

Special Thanks
City Ice
First Capital Bank
The Jefferson Hotel
VCU Department of Fashion Design & Merchandising

Al-Hadid makes complex sculptures that seem in a state of flux, suggesting both incompletion and decay. Underlying her large-scale, baroque forms are a wide array of influences, including ancient Biblical and mythological narratives, Arab oral traditions, Gothic church construction, Western painting, Islamic ornamentation, and scientific advances in physics and astronomy. The exhibition features a single new monumental sculpture—Trace of a Fictional Third—that interweaves landscape, architecture, and the human figure. It is accompanied by a selection of new, heavily worked graphite drawings that shed light on Al-Hadid’s creative process. Al-Hadid received her MFA in sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and currently lives and works in New York.

Al-Hadid was born in Aleppo, Syria, in 1981 and moved to the United States as a child. She studied sculpture and art history at Kent State University in Ohio (BA and BFA, 2003), and earned her MFA in sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond (2005). Her work has gained international attention, including recent solo exhibitions at Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Murcia, Spain; Nevada Museum of Art, Reno; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas; and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. She currently lives and works in New York.

Al-Hadid’s work is characterized by ambitious scale and complexity both based on a wide range of intellectual and personal sources. She uses everyday materials such as cardboard, plaster, plywood, and resin, pushing the limits of their physical properties to create a sense of precarious balance and impending collapse. Her works often refer to recognizable architectural components—towers, cathedral spires, labyrinths, and classical columns—while also incorporating elements of nature and the human form.

Balancing the monumentality of Al-Hadid’s sculptures is a quality of light that seems to animate and deconstruct them. While she leaves behind the folkloric, mythological, and historical narratives that inspired previous works, Trace of a Fictional Third continues her interest in themes of time and motion. Cascades convey liquidity; undulating fabrics merge with more solid structures. And examples of the human figure, more overt than in prior work, are both voluptuously corporeal and spectral.

Diana Al-Hadid: Trace of a Fictional Third is organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and curated by John B. Ravenal, Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. The sculpture is on loan courtesy of the George Economou Collection. The exhibition received support from the Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York.

For more than sixty years, Virginia-born artist Judith Godwin has explored abstract painting, recording motion and gesture with brushstrokes on canvas. Her dynamic compositions, layered with drips and splatters of paint, epitomize the “action painting” of the 1950s. Yet, when Godwin moved to New York in 1953, few women had gained acceptance in the art world, particularly those who were abstract painters. The paintings in this exhibition span the length of Godwin’s career, from the mid-20th to the early 21st century, demonstrating her remarkably persistent commitment to establishing and expanding her own abstract language.

Gesture also places Godwin’s work within the context of gestural paintings by a diverse group of artists in VMFA’s collection such as Adolph Gottlieb, Norman Lewis, Benjamin Wigfall, Hedda Sterne, James Brooks, Theodoros Stamos, and Joan Mitchell. By drawing attention to the multiplicity of artists who used abstraction for an array of purposes, this exhibition pushes the traditional boundaries of Abstract Expressionism and showcases the wide reaches of its legacy.

Judith Godwin: Early Abstractions, featuring 25 paintings Godwin produced in the 1950s and 1960s, runs concurrently at VCUarts Anderson Gallery located at 907 1/2 West Franklin Street, Richmond, VA. Phone 804.828.1522 or visit

Indian Silver for the Raj features selections from a magnificent collection of colonial Indian silver recently acquired by VMFA, and complements this summer’s banner exhibition, Maharaja: The Splendors of India’s Great Kings.

The first gallery investigates the Anglo-Indian encounter through three types of silver objects: the calling-card case, so essential to English etiquette; the rosewater sprinkler, similarly indispensable to Indian protocol; and the tea service, the quintessential meeting ground of these two cultures.

The second gallery explores the stylistic variety of Raj-period silver objects produced in different regions of India. Indian Silver for the Raj explores both cultural convergence and regional diversity.

Our award-winning James W. and Frances G. McGlothlin Wing will provide a dramatic setting for Chihuly at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, a major exhibition of work by internationally renowned glass artist Dale Chihuly, opening October 20, 2012. Chihuly’s art remains at the cutting edge of the technical and virtuoso possibilities of glass as a medium, and this exhibition will include many iconic works for which Chihuly is known — Ikebana, Mille Fiori, Chandeliers, Tabac Baskets, Venetians, Boats, Persian Ceiling — as well as site-specific installations, taking advantage of our soaring Atrium and reflecting pools.

View The Chihuly App in iTunes Preview.

The presentation at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is Chihuly’s third major U.S. museum exhibition in recent years, with record-breaking crowds attending exhibitions of his work at the de Young Museum in San Francisco in 2008 and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 2011. Dale Chihuly is credited with revolutionizing the Studio Glass movement and elevating the medium of glass from the realm of craft to fine art. The studio in Seattle, Washington, which Chihuly founded and directs, is an extraordinary workshop, employing many of the greatest glass artists to realize his unique vision.

Famous for his Great American Nude series, American painter Tom Wesselmann (1931 – 2004) is widely regarded as one of the leading figures in the vanguard of American Pop Art. Alongside his contemporaries Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and James Rosenquist, he forged a new movement using the materials and images of everyday popular culture. However, unlike his two fellow Pop artists, Wesselman has never been the subject of a major retrospective exhibition in North America. The Pop Art and Beyond: Tom Wesselmann Exhibition, organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, shows an artist who constantly reinvented himself long after the Pop Art movement had passed. He explored all kinds of techniques from plastic bas-relief to laser-cut steel drawings and multi-paneled shaped canvases. In his work, Wesselmann addressed the pressing issues of the art world of his time: the interpretation of the history of art; the status of the image; the relationship between art, industry and technology; and the American canon of beauty.

The exhibition has been critically acclaimed with Art Actuel writing: “Tom Wesselmann is a giant. Finally a superb exhibition that does him justice” and the Montreal Gazette talking of “Tom Wesselmann’s Pop Art: Powerful Crowded Canvases.” VMFA will be the only East Coast venue for this landmark exhibition.

 

This exhibition is organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts with the collaboration of the Estate of Tom Wesselmann, New York.

Generously sponsored by the Sydney and Frances Lewis Endowment Fund.

The Banner Exhibition Program at VMFA is supported by the Julia Louise Reynolds Fund.

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Domestic, Wild, Divine: Artists Look at Animals examines the way that artists have responded to the significant but often enigmatic roles that animals have played in human life. Drawn from VMFA’s entire collection, the exhibition features many perspectives on the subject of the animal—from wild beasts to treasured pets to otherworldly creatures.

The animal as subject has captivated artists for thousands of years. The cave paintings at Lascaux, France, among the oldest known works of art, feature hundreds of depictions of bulls, deer, and horses. Throughout their constant presence in human history, animals’ roles have varied widely, from providers of basic labor and locomotion to important characters in human myths, cultural rituals, and religious traditions.

Artists Look at Animals, drawn from VMFA’s entire collection, features many perspectives on the animal—whether wild beast, treasured pet, or otherworldly creature. Works in a variety of media—painting, sculpture, decorative arts—tell the story of the complex relationships that have been forged between humans and their fellow animals. Artists from prehistory to the present illuminate something of these emotional, spiritual, and physical connections that have flourished.

Beginning in 1962, Dorothy and Herbert Vogel began collecting contemporary works of art. A librarian and a postal worker, respectively, the New York City couple dedicated one of their salaries to purchasing art, and in a few decades they had amassed a collection encompassing thousands of works.

In a unique partnership with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Vogels distributed 2,500 works from that collection, with fifty works going to one art museum in each state, including VMFA.

The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States showcases all fifty works received by VMFA in 2008. While the Vogel collection is best known for its examples of Minimal and Conceptual art, the donations also explore numerous directions of the Post-Minimalist period including Figurative and Neo-Expressionist works.

Conservation support for The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States provided in part by the Robert Lehman Foundation.

The name Fabergé is synonymous with refined craftsmanship, jeweled luxury, and the last days of the doomed Russian imperial family. The array of enameled picture frames and clocks, gold cigarette cases and cane tops, hardstone animals and flowers in rock crystal vases, and ruby encrusted brooches and boxes continue to fascinate viewers as they did when first displayed in the windows of Fabergé’s stores in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and London.

Watch video on YouTube

Thanks to the generosity of Lillian Thomas Pratt and other donors, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts owns one of the finest Fabergé collections in existence. The Russian jeweler Karl Fabergé crafted objects for the Russian imperial family in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including specially commissioned Easter eggs. VMFA’s collection, the largest public collection of Fabergé outside of Russia, includes five of the thirteen Russian imperial Easter eggs that are in the United States. In parallel with the redesign of the permanent galleries, the museum has organized a major exhibition presenting the entire collection, accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue incorporating the latest scholarship and research.  Fabergé Revealed — the title of both exhibition and catalogue — dazzled VMFA visitors during the summer of 2011, and is now traveling while the permanent galleries are renovated.