Come hear the extraordinary story of how Agecroft Hall moved from Lancashire, England to Richmond, Virginia! Agecroft Hall started life as a rural estate in the 16th century, but several hundred years later, the Industrial Revolution was rapidly encroaching on the bucolic manor. Learn why T.C. Williams, Jr. chose the house to become the centerpiece of his new development, Windsor Farms, and how the unwanted house suddenly became the center of a national controversy in Britain that raged all the way down to Parliament. Discover what steps the British took to try to prevent the house from leaving the country and how Mr. Williams and his team prevailed.
Archives
The Cloth Unfolded 1: Linen, Laundry, and Laundresses in 19th-Century Still Life
(45 minute illustrated lecture – PowerPoint) Using images from the VMFA permanent collections, Mary Prevo, art historian and museum educator, will discuss her project: the carefully laundered linen table covering in nineteenth-century still life and its function as a measure of middle-class status. In the hands of artists like Fantin-Latour, Manet, Cezanne and Gauguin cool, smooth and subtly colored table coverings speak of comfort and domestic order. These images also witness to admiration these artists had for Dutch and French 17th– and 18th–century domestic interiors. These pictures also raise other questions: Who was responsible for doing the laundry and under what circumstances? Is the lavish use of the unfolded cloth in still life the other side of an equally pervasive interest the laundress? Do developments in domestic economy and the laundry industry in the 19th-century relate to the images of the unfolded linens, laundresses and ironers, who were described by Alcott and Zola and painted by Daumier, Boudin, and Degas?
Modern Art: Native American Style
Mid-century modern art is exemplified by an abstract aesthetic that emphasizes the materiality of the work. Numerous Native American artists, such as Kay Walkingstick, engaged with the rhetoric surrounding modern art but their self-identity as a Native American has overshadowed their contribution to modern art. This talk will examine the way mid-century Native American modern artists participated in the modern art scene.
Sex and Death in the Ancient Americas
Images of sex or death may be deemed immoral or inappropriate in current culture, however, ancient American cultures viewed these acts in a different manner. From the Aztecs of Mexico to the Moche of Peru, sex and death were the bookends of life with one representing conception and the other termination. Instead of being in contrast, these ideas were intimately linked within a cosmology that included ancestors, mythological beings and inanimate objects. This lecture will explore the images of sex and death on artworks from ancient Mesoamerican and Peruvian cultures.
Soft Pastel Painting Workshop
Fall in love with the velvety richness, the sparkling color, and the direct touch with which pastel has been enchanting artists for centuries! You’ll be ready to capture the world with delightful colors of after participating in this fun, informative workshop. Designed for artists, art teachers and high school students, the maximum class size of 12 participants makes it possible to accommodate all levels of experience. Total beginners to advanced artists will all enjoy this colorful workshop. Student soft pastels will be provided.
Note: This workshop can be given as a one or two day workshop depending on interest. The TWO-day workshop includes a charcoal value study and a painting from the participants’ own original photo. The ONE-day workshop includes a pastel painting transcription from instructor supplied images. Both workshops include lectures, demos, and packets of reference materials.
When: One or Two day workshop 10:00am – 3:00 pm
Bring a bag lunch to enjoy from 12:00-1:00
Through lecture and demonstration, Nina teaches a simple step-by-step method. Because working in soft pastels is as much about drawing as painting, she will teach you about using a grid for composition and the use of charcoal value studies that help with visualizing the image in your mind’s eye.
History and usage of materials and processes will be presented with samples of different brands of pastels, pastel pencils and papers to try. All workshop participants receive a packet of reference materials including: lecture transcripts, paper samples, and resources for art materials and books.
In addition to daily demonstrations in pastels, Nina will also give individual “at-the-easel” instruction throughout the workshop.
Student pastels and charcoal will be provided for participants, though everyone is encouraged to bring whatever pastels you may already have or plan to purchase.
A supplies list will be provided.
“Hail Columbia!” Personifications of America from the Colonial Era through World War I
This lecture traces the evolution of personifications of America from the beginning of European exploration through the emergence of the United States as a modern international superpower. Across this timeframe, artists symbolized America in a range of guises, including as a Native American princess, the classicized goddess Columbia, the personification of Liberty, and Uncle Sam. As emblems of America—the place, the nation, the concept—these figures embodied the values associated with the country and its people. Appearing in many different artistic media, images of personified America reflect shifting ideas about what America is, as well as revealing art’s important role in constructing national identity.
A Brief History of African American Art through the Civil Rights Era
African American artists occupy an important, though often overlooked place in the history of American art. This lecture surveys the creative work of African American artists from the colonial period through the 1960s—artists including Joshua Johnson, Robert Duncanson, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Aaron Douglas, Meta Warrick Fuller, Jacob Lawrence, Elizabeth Catlett, Beauford Delaney, and Norman Lewis, among others. In addition to examining their diverse subjects and styles, this lecture also places the work of African American artists within broader social, political, and cultural contexts.
Picturing Modern Womanhood: Suffragettes, Flappers, and Other New Women in American Art, 1910-1940
The early decades of the twentieth century witnessed dramatic changes in American society in general and women’s lives in particular. Many women gained new educational, occupational, and political opportunities, while also enjoying unprecedented social and sexual freedoms. Their experiences challenged traditional gender hierarchies and long-held assumptions about female nature. The so-called New Woman embodied modern femininity and proliferated in the pictorial arts during this period. By surveying various permutations of the New Woman—including the ardent suffragette, the liberated flapper, the independent worker, and the gender-bending artist—this lecture explores the shifting and often conflicted attitudes about modern womanhood in the United States.
Pocahontas in Image and Myth
Legends and images of Pocahontas, the young Native American woman who reportedly rescued Captain John Smith of the Jamestown settlement in the early 1600s, became popular in Western culture during her lifetime and continue to evolve into the present day. This lecture examines representations of this renowned yet elusive historical figure in the context of various narratives about her life and period attitudes about Native Americans. In images ranging from seventeenth-century prints, to the VMFA’s 1889 portrait by Richard Norris Brooke, to the late-twentieth-century Disney movie, Pocahontas appears as a complex character invested with diverse meanings as an exotic curiosity, exemplary Christian convert, and feminist heroine.
Winslow Homer’s Civil War
Widely regarded as one of America’s greatest artists, Winslow Homer (1836-1910) first gained national recognition for insightful paintings and illustrations about the Civil War. Informed by his first-hand observations at the Union front in Virginia, Homer adopted an unconventional approach to representing war: instead of depicting dramatic battle scenes and heroic military leaders, he humanized the conflict with pictures that explored soldiers’ daily life in camp and the war’s impact on the home front. This lecture examines Homer’s unique and highly influential vision of the sectional conflict. His images address some of the most complex and pressing issues of his day—the nature of modern warfare, shifting gender and race relations, and the return to normalcy in peacetime. Provocative and visually powerful, as well as deeply nuanced and often witty, Homer’s Civil War pictures continue to resonate in the twenty-first century.