Image Credits:
Savarin, 1981, Jasper Johns (American, born 1930), lithograph. Art © Jasper Johns and ULAE/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY Published by Universal Limited Art Editions
The Scream, 1895, Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863–1944), lithograph. Munch Museum

At a crossroads in the middle of his career, preeminent American artist Jasper Johns found his way forward in part by looking to the work of Norwegian Expressionist painter Edvard Munch. This November, VMFA presents a groundbreaking exhibition that examines how Johns mined Munch’s work in the late 1970s and early 1980s as he moved away from abstract painting towards a more open expression of love, sex, loss, and death.

Jasper Johns and Edvard Munch: Love, Loss, and the Cycle of Life assembles more than 120 paintings, drawings, and prints in once-in-a-lifetime combinations to trace the route Johns traveled in relation to Munch’s work. Organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in partnership with the Munch Museum in Oslo, the exhibition was conceived and organized by John B. Ravenal, Executive Director of deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum and former Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the VMFA.

Among the notable firsts, this will be the first time in 20 years that all four of Johns’s Seasons paintings and all three of his Between the Clock and the Bed paintings will be displayed together in the U.S.—and perhaps the only time the latter three paintings will be exhibited alongside their inspiration, Munch’s Self-Portrait Between the Clock and the Bed, as well as the actual bedspread from Munch’s home.

“This exhibition offers a detailed understanding of when and how the Norwegian expressionist art of Munch entered into the American modernist art of Johns,” says Ravenal. “It also proposes a greater role for Munch than previously thought in the great shift that occurred in Johns’s work of the early 1980s. After a decade making some of the defining abstract paintings of late 20th-century art, he returned to figurative imagery and a deeper engagement with human existence. Munch’s signature themes of love, loss, sex, and death may have gained increasing meaning for Johns as he passed the milestone of age fifty and as the AIDS crisis worsened.”

Between the Clock and the Bed, 1982–83, Jasper Johns (American, born 1930), encaustic on canvas. Art © Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Self-Portrait between the Clock and the Bed, 1940–43, Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863–1944), oil on canvas. Munch Museum, Oslo

Between the Clock and the Bed, 1981, Jasper Johns (American, born 1930), encaustic on canvas (three panels). The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of Agnes Gund. Art © Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

The Dance of Life, 1925, Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863–1944), oil on canvas. Munch Museum

Fall, 1986, Jasper Johns (American, born 1930), encaustic on canvas. Collection of the artist. Art © Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Madonna, 1895/1902, Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863-1944), lithograph. Munch Museum

Savarin, 1981, Jasper Johns (American, born 1930), lithograph. Art © Jasper Johns and ULAE/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY Published by Universal Limited Art Editions

The Scream, Munch, 1895, lithograph. Munch Museum

About the Artists

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) is one of early modern art’s most important figures. He was active through more than 60 years, from his debut in the 1880s until his death in 1944. Munch’s brooding, emotional, and intensely personal art inspired the Expressionist movement in the early 1900s. And his continual experimentation in painting, prints, drawing, sculpture, photography, and film have given him a unique position in the history of Norwegian and international art.

Jasper Johns (born 1930) burst onto the New York art world in the mid-1950s. The work he created led American art away from abstraction and personal expression and towards a more objective art that featured recognizable images such as targets, maps, and the American flag–“things the mind already knows,” as he describe them. Over the course of six decades, Johns’s art evolved toward more personal imagery, inspired in part by his interest in Munch.

Curator John Ravenal talks about the exhibition “Jasper Johns & Edvard Munch”, which premiered in Oslo and comes to at VMFA November 12, 2016 through February 20, 2017.

The list below represents sponsors of Jasper Johns and Edvard Munch: Love, Loss, and the Cycle of Life as of May 2016. For further information about sponsoring this exhibition or making a gift to the VMFA Exhibition Fund, please contact Jayne Shaw, Director of Development, at 804.340.5529 or jayne.shaw@VMFA.museum.

Presented by

The Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans Exhibitions Endowment

The Julia Louise Reynolds Fund

National Endowment for the Arts

Mrs. Frances Massey Dulaney

Mr. and Mrs. John D. Gottwald

Ivan Jecklin and Allison Weinstein
Carole and Marcus Weinstein

The Anne Carter and Walter R. Robins, Jr. Foundation

Pam and Bill Royall

Mary and Don Shockey

Mr. and Mrs. Fred T. Tattersall

Robert Lehman Foundation

This exhibition brings together the work of Charles Meryon and John Taylor Arms, printmakers who revered the art and architecture of medieval Europe.

Meryon, a champion of the Etching Revival in France, became renowned for Etchings of Paris (Eaux-fortes sur Paris) (1850-54), a series depicting the city’s medieval buildings and streets during a period of grand-scale urban renovation. Meryon’s views of the Ile de la Cité and bridges stretching across the Seine often include fantastical and macabre details: gargoyles perched on Notre-Dame, flocks of menacing birds, and historic monuments looming over minutely-drawn figures, alive and dead. Meryon produced prints in multiple states, meticulously altering their composition and tone—even as his mental state sharply and tragically declined.

Charles Meryon Architectural Etchings

1854, Charles Meryon (French, 1821–1868), etching and drypoint in dark brown ink on laid paper, first of two states. Promised gift of Frank Raysor

1852, Charles Meryon, French, 1821 – 1868 (Artist) Etching printed in black ink on greenish laid paper watermarked script P. Gift of Frank Raysor

1853, Charles Meryon (French, 1821–1868), etching in brown ink on laid paper. Promised gift of Frank Raysor

1850, Charles Meryon (French, 1821–1868), etching, drypoint, and engraving in black ink on laid paper, fourth of nine states. Gift of Frank Raysor

1853, Charles Meryon (French, 1821–1868), etching and drypoint in black ink on blue laid paper, fourth of seven states. Promised gift of Frank Raysor

1853, Charles Meryon (French, 1821–1868), etching and engraving in brown ink on laid paper, fourth of six states. Promised gift of Frank Raysor

1852, Charles Meryon (French, 1821–1868), etching and engraving in black ink on Japan paper, third of ten states. Gift of Frank Raysor

1852, Charles Meryon (French, 1821–1868), etching in black ink on blue laid paper. Gift of Frank Raysor

1852, Charles Meryon (French, 1821–1868), etching in black ink on green laid paper, fourth of eight states. Gift of Frank Raysor

1853, Charles Meryon (French, 1821–1868) etching and drypoint in dark brown ink on blue laid paper, fifth of eleven states. Promised gift of Frank Raysor

1854, Charles Meryon (French, 1821–1868), etching with drypoint in black ink on laid paper, fifth of twelve states. Promised gift of Frank Raysor

1854, Charles Meryon (French, 1821–1868), etching and drypoint in black ink on chine collé, fourth of seven states. Promised gift of Frank Raysor

1854, Charles Meryon (French, 1821–1868), etching and drypoint in black ink on chine collé, sixth of nine states. Promised gift of Frank Raysor

1855, Charles Meryon (French, 1821–1868), etching in black ink on laid paper, first of two states. Promised gift of Frank Raysor

In the early 20th century, American printmaker John Taylor Arms praised Meryon’s series as “a monument unique in its sensitive, imaginative, and deeply spiritual expression of architectural form and meaning”—his 1923 etching The Thinker (Le Penseur) reinterprets Meryon’s iconic grotesque subject. Trained as an architect, Arms found artistic inspiration in Europe’s diverse and regionally distinctive architectural styles, especially enduring Gothic structures encountered during his extensive travels. In the United States, the Gothic Revival skyscrapers of New York City fascinated him. This exhibition presents Arms’s views of Paris, Venice, Stockholm, New York, and beyond–including the recent VMFA acquisition An American Cathedral (The Woolworth Building)—all of which he rendered with laborious precision.

John Taylor Arms Architectural Etchings

1923, John Taylor Arms (American, 1887–1953), etching on wove paper. Bequest of John Barton Payne

1922, John Taylor Arms (American, 1887–1953), etching with stipple in black ink on laid paper. Promised gift of Frank Raysor

1930, John Taylor Arms (American, 1887–1953), etching in black ink on green laid paper. Promised gift of Frank Raysor

1931, John Taylor Arms (American, 1887–1953), etching in black ink on green laid paper. Promised gift of Frank Raysor

1938, John Taylor Arms (American, 1887–1953), etching in black ink on green laid paper. Promised gift of Frank Raysor

1940, John Taylor Arms (American, 1887–1953), etching and aquatint in black ink on laid paper. Promised gift of Frank Raysor

1920, John Taylor Arms (American, 1887–1953), etching in black ink on laid paper. Promised gift of Frank Raysor

1921, John Taylor Arms (American, 1887–1953), etching in black ink on wove paper. A. Paul Funkhouser Endowment Fund

Remnants and Revivals celebrates the technical prowess of these leading etchers whose varied lines capture the glory of the Gothic and its architectural nuances: hard, exact incisions give form to Manhattan skyscrapers; ragged, expressive drypoint scratches lend texture to ancient, porous limestone; and fine, undulating grooves enhance rivers with a surface that reflects the cities, old and new, through which they flow. Selections for this exhibition highlight both artists’ devotion to craftsmanship by the range of colored papers and inks represented and that each of the impressions from Meryon’s Etchings of Paris is a rare, unpublished artist’s proof.

Cocurated by Kristie Couser, Curatorial Assistant for the Mellon Collections, and Christopher Oliver, Assistant Curator of American Art, this exhibition is largely drawn from the Frank Raysor Collection, a generous, ongoing promised gift to the museum.

Image Credit:

The Vampire (Le Stryge), 1853, Charles Meryon (French, 1821—1868), etching in brown ink on laid paper, fourth of eight states.
Promised Gift of Frank Raysor
The Thinker of Notre-Dame (Le Penseur de Notre-Dame), 1923, John Taylor Arms (American, 1887–1953), etching on wove paper.
Bequest of John Barton Payne

Regarded by art historians as one of the most important and influential photographers of the 20th century, André Kertész was a leading proponent of seeing the world through a Modernist eye. This exhibition of thirty photographs is drawn from VMFA’s collection and highlights the artist’s early career in Hungary while also focusing on seminal moments during the sixty years when he worked in Paris and then New York City.

Born in Hungary in 1894, Kertész bought his first camera at age sixteen before being drafted into the army. Later, he moved to Paris where he worked as a freelance magazine photographer, joining a community of Hungarian expatriate artists who included Brassaï, Marcel Breuer, Robert Capa, and Lajos Tihanyi. Kertész’s work gained attention in Paris and the United States, and in 1936, he and his wife, Elisabeth, immigrated to New York City.

After his first few years in New York, Kertész’s photographs were included in the Museum of Modern Art’s comprehensive exhibition Photography, 1839–1937. He went on to work for Condé Nast for nearly twenty years, and thousands of his photographs were published in their magazines, including House & Garden and Vogue, as well as other publications such as Harper’s Bazaar. During his lifetime, he had major solo exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art and received numerous honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and Commander of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Kertész is curated by VMFA Director Alex Nyerges.

“I never wanted to take men’s art off the walls, I just say let’s build more walls.”
—Dorothy Gillespie

Abstract Expressionism, as a loosely defined postwar American art movement, coalesced in the 1940s and reached its height in the 1950s. Critic Clement Greenberg proclaimed that this new avant-garde made New York, rather than Paris, the center of the art world. Many of the participating artists insisted that their work was not the product of a stylistic development so much as an entire ethos that embraced the artist’s spontaneous gesture as a raw expression of identity.

Popular magazines such as Life, which published images of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and others, promoted a sense that “action painting” was the domain of men. Yet women artists had actively participated in the dialogue around abstraction from its very beginning and showed their work in many of the same galleries as their male counterparts. From subtle slights in newspaper reviews to outright exclusion from exhibitions, women faced discrimination by male artists, curators, gallery owners, and the press.

This exhibition brings together many of the women who offered innovative contributions to the vocabulary of Abstract Expressionism, pushing the movement forward and extending its boundaries. Notably, it includes four Virginians: Theresa Pollak, Nell Blaine, Dorothy Gillespie, and Judith Godwin.

“The Great War” changed the face of the world when it began on July 28, 1914. The story of World War I and the emotions it brought on are told through prints by British and American artists such as Muirhead Bone, Kerr Eby, Childe Hassam, James McBey, and Claude Shepperson. The works depict scenes of combat in France and the Near East, life on the home front in the United States and England, and the war’s aftermath and its commemoration. All of the prints come from the Frank Raysor Collection, a promised gift to the museum. Curated by Dr. Mitchell Merling, Paul Mellon Curator and Head of the Department of European Art.

Upcoming – William King Museum, Sep 1 – Nov 5, 2017

This exhibition examines the realities of life under segregation in 1950s America, as seen through the lens of groundbreaking photographer Gordon Parks (1912–2006). As the first African American photographer hired full time by Life magazine, Parks was frequently given assignments involving social issues affecting black America. In 1950, one such project took him back to his hometown in Kansas for a photo essay he planned to call “Back to Fort Scott.”

Untitled, Columbus, Ohio, 1950
Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation

Untitled, Fort Scott, Kansas, 1950
Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation

Mrs. Jefferson, Fort Scott, Kansas, 1950
Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation

Untitled, Fort Scott, Kansas, 1950
Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation

Parks had left Fort Scott some twenty years earlier, after his mother died, and he found himself, a teenager and the youngest of fifteen children, suddenly having to make his own way in the world. He used this assignment to revisit memories of his birthplace—many involving serious racial discrimination—and to reconnect with childhood friends, all of whom had attended the same all-black grade school as Parks. Since most of his classmates had also left Fort Scott, Parks traveled to Kansas City, Chicago, and other cities to record their lives there. One of the most visually rich and captivating of all his projects, Parks’s photographs, now owned by the Gordon Parks Foundation, were slated to appear in April 1951, but the photo essay was never published. Gordon Parks: Back to Fort Scott revives those photos and presents a rarely seen view of the everyday lives of African American citizens, years before the civil rights movement began in earnest.

Exclusive to VMFA’s presentation of this exhibition is Parks at Life: Works from VMFA’s Collection. These eight photographs by Parks appeared in subsequent photo essays for Life  on topics ranging from Black Muslims to the effects of segregation on one family. Copies of those issues will also be on display.

Gordon Parks: Back to Fort Scott is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in partnership with The Gordon Parks Foundation. Sarah Eckhardt, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, is curating the exhibition for the VMFA. Generous support has been provided by Canvas at VMFA and James W. Klaus.

Presented by The Council of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, with floral designs by The Garden Club of Virginia, Virginia Federation of Garden Clubs, and Garden Clubs of Virginia. Proceeds will support re-installation of VMFA’s internationally acclaimed Fabergé Collection that has been traveling the globe since 2012.

RELATED EVENTS

Barnes & Diehl, P.C.
Cantor, Stoneburner, Ford, Grana & Buckner
Charles Schwarzschild Jewelers Inc.
Mr. & Mrs. Edward Douma
Estes Express Lines
F. Richard Wilton, Jr., Inc.
James River Air Conditioning Company
Mark Franko Custom Building
RiverFront Investment Group, LLC
Stoever & Palmore Investment Group of Wells Fargo Advisors
Westminster Canterbury Richmond
Wood, Higgins, Shores Wealth Management Group of Ameriprise Financial Services, Inc.
Xenith Bank

Caspari
CSC Leasing
Fraîche on the Avenues
Harris, Hardy & Johnstone, P.C.
The Hermitage at Cedarfield
Janet Brown Interiors
K2 Awards and Apparel
Alex & Joy Paoletto
Party Perfect
Westwood Pharmacy

Omnipresent in 19th-century France, the horse was portrayed in every manner and style by all types of artists. The French Horse from Géricault to Picasso: Works from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts explores this subject in detail, with major paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by artists as diverse as Pablo Picasso, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Antoine-Louis Barye, Edgar Degas, Théodore Géricault, and others representing every major movement in French art from Romanticism to Fauvism. Featuring more than 40 works, this VMFA statewide exhibition draws from the museum’s collections including the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon.

The French Horse from Géricault to Picasso is the outcome of an innovative course team-taught this fall by Dr. Mitchell Merling, Paul Mellon Curator and Head of the European Art Department at VMFA; Jeffrey Allison, Paul Mellon Educator and Manager of VMFA Statewide Programs and Exhibitions; and Richard Waller, Executive Director, University of Richmond Museums; with course assistant Kristie Couser, Curatorial Assistant for the Mellon Collection, VMFA. Students participating in the intercollegiate seminar were from Randolph-Macon College, the University of Richmond, the University of Virginia, the University of Mary Washington, and Virginia Commonwealth University. Participating students will present their research at the opening symposium at the University of Richmond on March 2.

Exhibition Venues

Mar 3–Apr 25, 2016
University of Richmond Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art

May 6–July 31, 2016
The National Sporting Library & Museum, Middleburg

September 1–October 9, 2016
University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg

Images:
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973), The Horse, 1901, crayon and ink on paper, sheet: 3 1/2 × 5 1/4 in. (8.89 × 13.34 cm). Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 85.795

Théodore Géricault (French, 1791-1824), Mounted Jockey, ca. 1821-22, oil on canvas, 14 1/2 × 18 1/4 in. (36.83 × 46.36 cm). Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 85.497

A leading printmaking artist, Kawase Hasui was known for his vivid winter landscapes. Snow at the Zojoji Temple depicts a woman holding an umbrella, walking in the snow in front of this ninth-century Buddhist temple. The Zojoji Temple was one of Hasui’s favorite subjects and he created several prints of this sacred site over the course of his career. In this 1929 version, one of twelve prints in the exhibition, Hasui used contrasting colors and the atmospheric perspective to create a snowy winter scene.

Other prints, also drawn from the more than 500 works donated by René and Carolyn Balcer, include Japanese landmarks such as the Heian Shrine in Kyoto, Mount Fuji near Tokyo, and the rural area in Yoshida. Seen together, they demonstrate Hasui’s remarkable skills as a printmaker and colorist, as well as his extraordinary ability to capture Japan’s identity and spirit in his landscapes. The exhibition is curated by Li Jian, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Curator of East Asian Art.

To view more works by Hasui and other artists, visit our East Asian Art collection!

Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic presents a stunning retrospective of this artist’s prolific career through nearly 60 paintings and sculptures. Kehinde Wiley’s work raises intriguing questions about race, gender, and the politics of representation by portraying contemporary African American men and women using the conventions of traditional European portraiture. Appropriating the format of specific paintings by renowned masters ranging from Titian to Édouard Manet, Wiley often depicts his subjects wearing sneakers, hoodies, and other gear associated with today’s hip-hop culture and sets them against ornate decorative backgrounds that evoke earlier eras and cultures.

By replacing the European aristocrats with contemporary black subjects, Wiley’s portraits draw attention to the absence of African Americans from historical and cultural narratives. Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic is organized by the Brooklyn Museum and curated by Eugenie Tsai, John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum. Dr. Sarah Eckhardt, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, is the coordinating curator at VMFA.

Kehinde Wiley (American, b. 1977). Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps, 2005. Oil on canvas, 108 x 108 in. (274.3 x 274.3 cm). Collection of Suzi and Andrew B. Cohen. © Kehinde Wiley. (Photo: Sarah DeSantis, Brooklyn Museum)

Kehinde Wiley (American, b. 1977). Shantavia Beale II, 2012. Oil on canvas, 60 x 48 in. (152.4 x 121.9 cm). Collection of Ana and Lenny Gravier. © Kehinde Wiley. (Photo: Jason Wyche, courtesy of Sean Kelly, New York)

Kehinde Wiley (American, b. 1977). Leviathan Zodiac, 2011. Oil and gold enamel on canvas, 95¾ x 71¾ in. (243.2 x 182.2 cm). Collection of Blake Byrne, Los Angeles. Courtesy of Roberts & Tilton, Culver City, California. © Kehinde Wiley. (Photo: Robert Wedemeyer, courtesy of Roberts & Tilton, Culver City, California)

Kehinde Wiley (American, b. 1977). Saint Remi, 2014. Stained glass, 96 x 43½ in. (243.8 x 110.5 cm). Courtesy of Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris. © Kehinde Wiley

Kehinde Wiley (American, b. 1977). Houdon Paul-Louis, 2011. Bronze with polished stone base, 34 x 26 x 19 in. (86.4 x 66 x 48.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Frank L. Babbott Fund and A. Augustus Healy Fund, 2012.51. (Photo: Sarah DeSantis, Brooklyn Museum)

The list below represents sponsors of Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic as of March 2016. For further information about sponsoring this exhibition or making a gift to the VMFA Exhibition Fund, please contact Jayne Shaw, Director of Development, at 804.340.5529 or jayne.shaw@VMFA.museum.

Presented by _________________

The Julia Louise Reynolds Fund
___________________

Ivan Jecklin and Allison Weinstein
Carole and Marcus Weinstein

Norfolk Southern Corporation

Pam and Bill Royall

Mary and Don Shockey

___________________

Richmond (VA) Chapter, The Links, Incorporated

The national tour of Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic is made possible
by the Henry Luce Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Workhouse Arts Center, Building W-16 Vulcan Gallery
9518 Workhouse Way,  Lorton, VA 22079
703.584.2900
WorkhouseArts.org

Since 2009, VMFA has displayed the work of Visual Arts Fellowship recipients on the museum’s campus, as well as at Richmond International Airport. In recognition of the recently announced 2016–17 Professional winners this year, VMFA is expanding the exposure of Virginia artists across the Commonwealth with the opening of an exhibition at The Workhouse Arts Center in Lorton, VA.

Part of VMFA’s Statewide program, First Look: VMFA 2016 Fellows at Workhouse Arts Center which runs Apr 9–Jul 3, will feature the work of seven new VMFA Fellowship recipients representing different regions of VA. This is the first of the now annual fellowship exhibition rotation hosted by statewide partner Workhouse Arts Center. Opening reception will take place May 14 as part of the Second Saturday Art Walk from 6–9 pm.

Exhibiting Artists by Hometown

Tyrone Turner | Photography | Arlington

Tyrone Turner is an independent photographer based in Arlington, VA whose work explores the nature of humanity, the natural world and the relationship between the two. He is a contributing photographer with National Geographic and collaborates with various editorial, non-profit, and commercial entities.

These pictures are part of a larger body of work that Tyrone has developed over the past decade about the challenges and changes in his hometown of New Orleans and southern Louisiana, especially in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the Gulf Oil Spill, and existential threats to this culturally rich yet ecologically fragile area.

Big Nine

Leigh Anne Chambers | Painting | Courtland

Leigh Anne has been the Executive Director of Rawls Museum Arts, a partner of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, since 2002 where she has worked to bring contemporary art to a rural region.  She has been awarded numerous grants to offer arts programming to students. She received her Arts Administrative Certificate from New York University in 2004 and an MFA in Visual Art from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2010.

Her studio practice considers social ordering, or how a society determines what is tasteful, while engaging domestic materials to challenge traditional notions of art.  She alters familiar household items like vinyl flooring and carpets and uses these domestic materials for both practical and formal purposes and alters them in the attempt to derive meaning.

Part of the whole thing

Kristin Skees | Mixed Media | Hampton

Kristin Skees was raised in Birmingham, Alabama. She has a BFA from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, a MFA from the University of Arizona, and an MLIS from the University of Alabama. She works in a variety of media, including photography, experimental fibers, digital video and installation.

Her photographs are found in various private and public collections, including the Cohen Family Collection, the Candela Collection, the Huntsville Museum of Art and the Mobile Museum of Art. Kristin teaches in the Department of Fine Art and Art History at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia.

Angela and Steve

Valerie Molnar & Matt Spahr | Mixed Media | Richmond

Matt Spahr, a sculptor from California (among other places), and Valerie Molnar, a painter from Cleveland, investigate the transfer of energy and the dynamic exchange within nature with color, form, and complex time based installation.

Through plants, residual haunting, sculpture, and painting they experiment and debate on both real and romantic ideas of the inherent and potentially inherent attributes of naturally occurring phenomenon in our universe. The collaboration began in 2012 as their work collided through their friendship and mutual love for plants. They both teach at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Same Old Story, Valerie Molnar and Matt Spahr (2016–17 Collaborative Professional Fellowship Recipients, New and Emerging Media), gels on lights, acrylic yarn

Martha Jones | Painting | Williamsburg

Martha Jones’s abstract paintings explore the intersection of contemporary idiom and tradition. In her recent work, Jones is interested in how the phenomenon of identical twinning, the separate development of individuals with the same genetic material, serves as a metaphor for the way her abstractions are based on a process of repetition and variation. The paintings draw their themes from various sources, including alphabetic shapes and word play, the iconography of maps and the abstract potential of the Roman arch.  Paintings range in size from the monumental (up to 7’ x 9’) to the very small (8” x 8”).

Yellow Network

Martha is a full-time artist who lives and works in Williamsburg. She has a deep and long-standing acquaintance with the ancient traditions that inform her work having studied ancient Greek and Roman language, literature and art and archaeology and having taught these subjects at the College of William and Mary and elsewhere.  Her experiences of living and traveling in Greece, Italy, and elsewhere in Europe have inspired much of the metaphor on which her work is based.

Charlie Brouwer | Sculpture | Willis

Charlie Brouwer and Glenda, his wife since 1966, live in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Floyd County, Virginia. Nine acres of open fields and woods, with 20 outdoor sculptures placed along a half-mile walking trail, surround the house and studio. Charlie calls their place “Out There” because of its remote location at the end of a gravel road, but also because he believes that art can point us towards thoughts, feelings, and meanings beyond our immediate experience.

Charlie received his BA in English from Grand Valley State University before earning his MA in Painting and MFA in Sculpture from Western Michigan University. He received his BA in English from Grand Valley State University before earning his MA in Painting and MFA in Sculpture from Western Michigan University.

Memory

He taught art from 1974 to 2008, including 2 years in Australia and 11 in Michigan before becoming a Professor of Art at Radford University for 21 years. Since 1975, his work has been shown in well over 200 exhibitions throughout the United States, Australia, Hungary, and Poland. He now works full time creating indoor and outdoor sculptures as well as temporary public art installations. To date he has completed 13 large-scale community engagement projects that involve borrowing hundreds of ladders from all across a community. The temporary sculptures he creates become metaphors for the aspirations of the whole community, depending on individual hopes and dreams, supporting each other, and rising up together.

The noted American contemporary photographer Thomas R. Schiff uses a panoramic camera to create dynamic and startlingly original images of well-known buildings and familiar places: “I always like to go to places people are familiar with and show the perspective from a panoramic camera,” he recently stated. “The camera distorts everything in the picture – straight lines become curved and it throws off your perspective. It challenges your relationship to what is familiar or thought to be understood.”

The artist’s passion for photography began in grade school in Cincinnati, Ohio, when he began taking photographs with a Kodak Brownie camera. By the time he studied photography at Ohio University he was using a 35mm camera, but Schiff eventually grew tired of the small format of traditional cameras and in 1994 he purchased a Hulcherama 360-degree panoramic camera that allowed him to create highly detailed photographs of building exteriors and interiors on a monumental scale. The artist also began using a custom-made tripod that allows him to elevate the camera up to 20 feet in the air, thus avoiding the many obstructions that one finds at ground level, such as fire plugs, parked cars, and stop signs, as well as a wide angle lens, which allows him to capture more of the image above and below the horizon line. The resulting full-color panoramic photographs of special spaces, places and structures in Ohio were published in 2003 in Panoramic Ohio, a bicentennial tribute to his home state.

In 2004 Schiff began taking panoramic photographs of Virginia, which like Ohio features exceptional historic buildings and beautiful natural environments. This exhibition presents 40 photographs that Schiff made in the Commonwealth of Virginia between 2004 and 2013, all of which were included in the artist’s 2015 publication Virginia 360°: Photographs by Thomas Schiff. Combining Schiff’s passion for photography and his love of architecture, the works on display in this exhibition provide a fresh, new perspective for these notable Virginia landmarks, thus encouraging the viewer to reevaluate their perceptions of the world.

A Celebration of Louise Cochrane

Throughout the last four decades of her life, Louise B. Cochrane forged a deep and meaningful relationship with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. When she passed away on December 10, 2015, the museum lost a dedicated and beloved patron, whose presence will be deeply missed, but whose legacy—as a donor and an artist—will continue to be felt throughout the museum for many years to come.

A Floral Jubilee: The Art of Louise Cochrane, an exhibition of 25 works, had been in the planning stages for many months and was scheduled to celebrate the 100th anniversary of her birth on January 30, 2016. With her passing, the exhibition is now also a commemoration “We are so grateful for Louise’s devotion to VMFA over these past years,” says VMFA Director Alex Nyerges. “It’s only fitting that we honor her life by making her art available for all of our visitors to see and appreciate.”

Louise began taking painting lessons at the Tuckahoe Woman’s Club in 1970. Shortly thereafter, she joined VMFA’s Council and became a docent. “My interest in the museum seemed to grow from there,” she recalled in a 2007 interview. She was appointed to the museum’s Board of Trustees in 1977.

As her practice of painting intertwined with her work at the museum, she participated in workshops and classes in Richmond and other cities, including Venice, Italy. Her extensive travels and love of gardening provided the subjects for many of her paintings over the years, but her particular focus was always flowers.

2015
Louise B. Cochrane (American, 1916–2015)
Oil on linen
Estate of Louise B. Cochrane 2015
Louise B. Cochrane (American, 1916–2015)
Oil on linen
Estate of Louise B. Cochrane

2015
Louise B. Cochrane (American, 1916–2015)
Oil on linen
Estate of Louise B. Cochrane 2015
Louise B. Cochrane (American, 1916–2015)
Oil on linen
Estate of Louise B. Cochrane

2015
Louise B. Cochrane (American, 1916–2015)
Oil on linen
Estate of Louise B. Cochrane 2015
Louise B. Cochrane (American, 1916–2015)
Oil on linen
Estate of Louise B. Cochrane

2015
Louise B. Cochrane (American, 1916–2015)
Oil on linen
Estate of Louise B. Cochrane 2015
Louise B. Cochrane (American, 1916–2015)
Oil on linen
Estate of Louise B. Cochrane

2015
Louise B. Cochrane (American, 1916–2015)
Oil on linen
Estate of Louise B. Cochrane 2015
Louise B. Cochrane (American, 1916–2015)
Oil on linen
Estate of Louise B. Cochrane

2015
Louise B. Cochrane (American, 1916–2015)
Oil on linen
Estate of Louise B. Cochrane 2015
Louise B. Cochrane (American, 1916–2015)
Oil on linen
Estate of Louise B. Cochrane

In 1988, Louise and her husband, J. Harwood Cochrane, established an endowment to support the purchase of American art. This generous fund has enabled the museum to acquire important works of American art, including the recently acquired Prince William and His Elder Sister, Princess Sophia by Benjamin West, The Wounded Hound by William Ranney, Quince Blossoms by Charles Caryl Coleman, and Brideship (Colonial Brides) by Thomas Hart Benton, as well as William Wetmore Story’s sculpture of Cleopatra and dozens of other exquisite objects and paintings. In recognition of their outstanding philanthropy, the museum’s Cochrane Court—outside of the Ancient Art and East Asian Art galleries—and the Cochrane Atrium were named for the couple.

A Floral Jubilee: The Art of Louise Cochrane explores Louise Cochrane’s passion for many types of blooms including sunflowers, lilies, daisies, daffodils, irises, and more. But it also reveals that her favorite is, above all, the rose.

Dr. Susan J. Rawles, Associate Curator of American Painting and Decorative Art and Acting Head of the American Art Department, notes that Louise’s paintings were featured in several exhibitions throughout the years. “In fact, her 1994 painting Reflections has been on display outside the McGlothlin American Art Galleries since 2011,” she says.

This new show features one portrait of a mixed bouquet that was inspired by the 2015 VMFA exhibition Van Gogh, Manet, and Matisse: The Art of the Flower. “Even in her later years, Louise continued to be inspired by her connection to the museum and the world of art,” Rawles points out; “symbiotically, her legacy will be our inspiration.”

Where do a photographer’s impulse to create a documentary image and aesthetics meet? In the early 20th century, American photographer Lewis Hine (1874–1940) embarked on a decades-long mission to document the abject working conditions of the nation’s child laborers with the hope of provoking change. As a result, he created a catalogue of photographs that not only served as provocative catalysts for American labor reform, but were also striking images in which viewers could clearly see the strength, dignity, and hope of the people depicted.

In addition to photographs by Hine, The Likeness of Labor presents complementary works from the generation of photographers that came after him. Working during the Great Depression, artists such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Margaret Bourke-White, who were influenced by Hine’s interest in American laborers and migrants, sought to portray these individuals in the midst of the nation’s desperate economic conditions. Though most of the photographs feature anonymous subjects, each is a likeness of a man, woman, or child’s persona shaped by hardship.

A year-long installation in the museum’s atrium, Here and Above situates two welded steel sculptures in a cross-generational dialogue about material, form, and the environment. Rising from the ground in a delicate balance, Two Box Structure reads as a vertical composition of geometric shapes, while also suggesting human figures. Extending from the wall overhead, Noctilucent Clouds offers a literal model of luminous, thin clouds located in the most distant part of the atmosphere, while also reading as a dynamic composition of lines in space.

Rebecca Smith (b.1954), the daughter of Abstract Expressionist sculptor David Smith (1906–1965), spent her early childhood in the New York hamlet of Bolton Landing, playing in the fields amid dozens of her father’s sculptures. Here the works of these two artists respond to one another as natural light activates their surfaces, drawing the surrounding space into the conversation.

David Smith
American, 1906-1965
Two Box Structure, 1961
Stainless steel
On loan from Philadelphia Museum of Art: Gift of Paul and Hope Makler, 1972

Rebecca Smith
American, born 1954
Noctilucent Clouds, 2015
Stainless steel, interference acrylic paint
On loan from Rebecca Smith, courtesy Waqas Wajahat

This exhibition explores nocturnes–images that evoke the night. Luminous apparitions of the divine, dazzling fireworks, lamplit urban streets, and twilight’s soft glow over the natural landscape are all subjects that have intrigued and challenged printmakers across the centuries.

Nocturnes by European and American artists reveal the dark hours to be as lively as they are quiet. Nightfall demonstrates how these artists employ a range of printmaking techniques—mezzotint (a tonal method called the “dark manner”), etching, engraving, woodcut, and lithography—to render contrasts between light and shade as well as the atmospheric effects of light emanating from the night sky or electrical sources.

Nightfall: Prints of the Dark Hours is largely drawn from the Frank Raysor Collection, a generous promised gift to the museum.

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Rodin: Evolution of a Genius

Available in English and Français. Use your own mobile device and headphones and our free wi-fi to stream the audio tour in the galleries or enjoy the tour at home on your computer. It’s also available for download as an App.

Organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Musée Rodin in Paris, this exhibition will feature nearly 200 works by the greatest sculptor of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries: Auguste Rodin. Revealing the evolving output of this genius of sculpture, the exhibition examines his techniques, materials, models and assistants, and explores the extraordinary working process behind some of his best known works.

Auguste Rodin completely revitalized the very language of sculpture with his passion for the creative act. Fragile plasters as well as patinated bronzes, marble figures, astonishing ceramics and never-before-exhibited photographs all attest to this creative intensity, with much of the work presented in North America for the first time.

Rodin: Evolution of a Genius is organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in collaboration with the Musée Rodin, Paris. Rodin is organized for VMFA by Dr. Mitchell Merling, Paul Mellon Curator and Head of European Art. The exhibition catalogue, with contributions on Rodin’s process by leading scholars, will be published by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Sponsors

Presented by:

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The Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans Exhibition Endowment

The Julia and Tunnicliff Fox Foundation
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Lilli and William Beyer

Norfolk Southern Corporation

Northern Trust Company

The Rock Foundation

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

A generous loan to VMFA from George’s Washington’s Mount Vernon, two paintings by Eastman Johnson depict the crumbling structures at the first president’s plantation where twenty-six African American slaves still lived and worked in 1857. Owned at that time by the president’s great-grandnephew John Augustine Washington, the once-imposing estate on the Potomac River had fallen into great disrepair and Johnson’s paintings emphasize this disintegration that, far from the gaze of family and tourists, loomed ominously over their enslaved occupants.

M-1001; Washington’s Kitchen, Mount Vernon by Eastman Johnson in 1864; oil on board