Cultivating History: Food, Crops, and Art reveals the untold stories of many everyday crops. Spanning over 200 years of botanical art and illustration, Cultivating History reflects the cross-cultural histories of various plants that have contributed to the arts and sciences as well as human history and progress. This educational exhibition includes 13 beautifully illustrated images…
Request ProgramEducational Exhibitions for Loan
The Office of Statewide Partnerships offers a world of art through its Educational Exhibitions. These portable exhibitions consist of reproductions of great art from the VMFA permanent collection, or panels of informative text with photo images, or framed posters. Click on the exhibition titles below for detailed information of each. Click on “How to Order Educational Exhibitions for Loan” to view how to and who may borrow these exhibitions and their security reqirements.
A Horse of Course: The Equine Image in Art
Of the thousands of examples of rock art found at Lascaux, Niaux, Vallon-Pont-d’arc, and other sites across France and Spain, nearly a third of the figures represent horses. In this workshop, participants look at the horse in art history, tracing the ways in which artists have used the horse as subject matter over the millennia.
Request ProgramAmerican Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
What IS American Art? Is it an 18th century portrait that captures the pride of a citizen in the newly formed United States? Is it a magnificent landscape that presents a stunning vista of the American West? Perhaps it is a lavish still life that flaunts the wealth of the Gilded Age, or an abstract composition that challenges the eye to dance with it across the canvas.
Request ProgramA New Mosaic: African American Art from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
This exhibition features high-quality photographic reproductions of works by African American artists spanning nearly 200 years, from the 19th century through today. Encounter striking landscapes in the style of the Hudson River School, cityscapes integrating the mode of French Fauvism, the craftsmanship of a 19th-century professional furniture maker, and the contemporary integration of Japanese ukiyo-e style prints with the symbolism of present-day urban American life. The exhibition showcases the great diversity in style, media, and subject matter of African American art.
Request ProgramArchitecture in Virginia: The Old Dominion
Virginia emerged from the American Revolution battle-scarred and debt-ridden. Tidewater planters could no longer afford to construct many fine buildings, as they had done in the decades before. Population and power began to shift toward the central and western areas of the state, a movement symbolized by the transfer of Virginia’s capital inland, from Williamsburg to Richmond, in 1780.
Request ProgramI Am: Identity in African Art at VMFA
What can the visual arts tell us about an individual or community? This exhibition explores the concept of identity in traditional African art and culture by focusing on objects that speak to various roles and personal status within a society. Featuring twelve high-quality photographic reproductions of objects in VMFA’s African collection, this display exposes the union between art and life in Africa.
Request ProgramJamestown and Beyond: The World of 1607
This fascinating educational exhibition examines how the new colony in Virginia fit into the cultural, historical, and geographical context of the day — and how the story of Jamestown has continued to inspire American artists. Twelve reproductions of images from VMFA’s collection combine with explanatory text and an introductory panel to illustrate the connections between the struggling colony and the world of 1607.
Request ProgramLooking Toward an Inner Light: Portraits from the Paul Mellon Collection
Portraits reveal much about the history and culture of the people portrayed. They can tell us who they were, how they lived, and what they thought about themselves. This exhibition focuses on the work of eleven 19th-century French painters who worked during the first era in which photography was used as a portrait medium. The twelve photographic reproductions of paintings from the VMFA Mellon Collection offer the viewer an opportunity to explore the ways in which these artists broke with tradition by depicting real people as they existed in the contemporary world.
Request ProgramOf Natural Liberty and Independence: George Catlin’s Portraits of Native Americans
The nineteenth-century painter George Catlin (1796–1872) recorded the appearance and customs of Native Americans for his generation and for posterity. Beginning in 1830, Catlin made numerous trips to the American West to document the “natural liberty and independence” of a disappearing culture.
Request ProgramThe Classical Past: Greece and Rome
Can you picture the glory and grandeur of ancient Greece and Rome? Athletes contended for victory, fame—and coveted prizes—in the first Olympic games. Trading ships loaded with olive oil, wine, grain, and other goods sailed the blue-green waters of the Mediterranean Sea. Poets, politicians, playwrights, philosophers, sculptors, architects, and artisans created a legacy that has inspired Western culture throughout the following millennia.
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