Come experience a unique photographic journey through the beautifully decaying rural places within our state with which so many Virginians have become fascinated. Photographer John Plashal has commemorated these abandoned gems by capturing their beauty and delivering them to you in a presentation full of powerful imagery and emotional stories. Experience the “unseen” side of…
Request ProgramSpeakers on the Arts
Archived Lectures. Some no longer available. Please visit the Statewide Faculty page for up-to-date listings.
VMFA Speakers on the Arts lectures are an excellent complement to programming at partner sites. They can also introduce new areas of art to Partner audiences and enhance community events and celebrations. A wide selection of topics and speakers is available for VMFA Statewide Partners. See Booking Speakers on the Arts for information about requesting a lecture.
Edward Beyer and the Jeffersonian Landscape
The artist Edward Beyer came to the U.S. from Germany after the Revolution of 1848. For several years Beyer, a graduate of the Düsseldorf Academy, traveled around the northeast U.S. and Ohio, sketching, painting oil landscapes, and exhibiting a moving panorama. In the mid-1850s he traveled to Virginia where he made panoramic oils in the…
Request ProgramArt of the First Cities: Worship and Warfare in the art of the ancient Sumerians
History begins with the cities of ancient Sumer, in southern Iraq; it is here that writing was first invented. But this first writing was used almost exclusively to record financial transactions; and so the visual arts, developed into a disciplined system to promote the power of the rulers of early Mesopotamia, give us access to…
Request ProgramFirst Family of the Sun: the Strange Art of Akenaten
In the middle of the 18th Dynasty, in the period of Egypt’s New Kingdom, a young pharaoh suddenly changed his name to Helper of the Sun, closed the great temples, moved the country’s capital, and declared worship of the Aten, the disc of the Sun, to be the sole state religion. To promote this radical…
Request ProgramLove in the art of the ancient régime (or Love in the Art of 18th Century France)
Soon after ascending the throne at age 13, King Louis XV of France decided to abandon governance in favor of a life of sensual pleasures, to be enjoyed with his wife, mistresses official and unofficial, and countless encounters with young adventuresses brought to him from many parts of his country. The formalities and complexities of…
Request ProgramPassion and Violence in a Most Unassuming Art: The Wonders of Greek Vase Painting
We see Greek vases standing in quiet dignity in museum galleries, their lovely shapes designed for service and display. But more than any other art form, the decorations on them give us a most vivid insight into the lives and character of the ancient Greeks. Painted with the greatest artistry, often by artists who signed…
Request ProgramFrom Photographs to Fabric Patterns
Biology, art and activism merge in this presentation. Dawn Flores, Creative Director for The Forest Project, tells the story of how she collaborated with other artists to document a 60-acre urban forest clear-cut for development. Dawn has created over 1,000 fabric patterns from photographs she took, of the now clear-cut property, and works with quiltmakers…
Request ProgramStyle 1900: Art & Artists at the Turn of the Last Century
The Paris Exposition of 1900 was a pivotal moment for Western art and design. Explore artists and designers who were and who weren’t included at the exhibition and the works of art that dazzled and dismayed critics and the public.
Request ProgramDepictions of the American Landscape
Although activists often pinpoint its genesis in the 1960s, the environmental movement in the United States has roots in 19th-century American landscape painting. Beginning with the Hudson River School, artists, predominately painters, have depicted the environment as an allusion to such disparate ideologies as manifest destiny, environmental concerns, gendered places, or literary devices. Looking at…
Request ProgramSally Mann’s Photographs
A nearly lifelong resident of Rockbridge County, Virginia, photographer and writer Sally Mann developed her first photograph in April 1969. During the 1970s, Mann took photographs of women, the Virginia countryside, still lives, and nudes. In 1983, Mann turned her camera almost exclusively to adolescent girls and then began taking photographs of her own children in…
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