Rediscover and re-enchant your world. This workshop begins with a series of exercises that heighten awareness and appreciation of the environment. Building on this awareness, participants are encouraged to develop a playful interaction with their surroundings and create art installations using only materials found in the environment. Past art installations have taken many forms, including interactive installations, sound sculptures, art performances, and (where there’s water) floating sculptures. This outdoor workshop can be held in a park, on school grounds, or in any other such public space.
Archives
The People’s Library
The People’s Library is a highly collaborative, sustainable and interactive public art project. We work with communities to make handmade paper from discarded books, invasive plants, and countless other recycled materials. These sheets of handmade paper are then sewn together to create beautiful, one-of-a-kind books. Participants then fill their books with writing, photographs, family histories and much more.
Workshop participants will learn a variety of sustainable art forms, while working together to create unique, collaborative, and generative archives that make room for all of our diverse histories
Politics and Painting: French Art Movements of the 19th Century
France was the most advanced and most prosperous country in the world during the 19th century. It was also dynamic and politically unstable, undergoing four changes of constitution before 1900. The visual arts, and in particular painting, played an important role in the social turmoil of the French republic. Controversies about social class, gender, and economic equity played out in art as much as in the press. This lecture explores many of these topics and the painters who alternately championed or turned their backs on the great causes of their time — including David, Delacroix, Courbet and Manet.
Big Top Art
The circus is coming to town! Toulouse-Lautrec’s Le Tandem, part of the Paul Mellon Collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, ignites this visual presentation of art inspired by a trip to the circus. From masterpieces by Pablo Picasso and Georges Seurat to vintage circus posters, no clowning around for this exploration of portraiture, graphic design, and more.
Berthe Morisot and the Impressionist Image of Women
“It is important to express oneself … provided the feelings are real and are taken from your own experience.” – Berthe Morisot
Berthe Morisot was a woman of extraordinary talents who carved a career for herself out of the male-dominated art world of 19th century Paris. She was one of only a few women who exhibited with both the Paris Salon and the highly influential and innovative Impressionists. Morisot’s art depicts the world of the bourgeoisie: their clothes, their lifestyle, their surroundings, and their relationships. Through her unusual talent, the modern viewer can see the essence of quotidian life for the rising middle class of 19th century Paris.
An Album of a Century: Photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue
“I take photographs with love, so I try to make them art objects. But I make them for myself first and foremost — that is important.” – Jacques-Henri Lartigue
French photographer and painter Jacques-Henri Lartigue (1894-1986) is most famous for his stunning photos of automobile races, planes, and fashionable Parisian women from the turn of the century. This lecture explores Lartigue’s photographs from his first sincere, often playful, presentation of friends, family, and French society made as early as age 6 to his later fashion layouts and portraits.
A Brilliant Disorder: The Works of William Blake
From his early visions as a child to his later prints and poems, Blake saw the world through the vivid lens of his personal theology. Influencing countless artists and writers, most of which worked long after his death, Blake’s imaginative genius still enthralls viewers today. Though most often known for his poetry and prose, Blake was also an accomplished artist, regarded as seminal and significant within the history of both art and literature. Focusing on his illuminations, prints, and paintings in the context of his personal and literary life, this lecture explores the life and work of William Blake, English poet, mystic, and artist.
Travels with George Catlin
George Catlin recorded for posterity the appearances and customs of the Indian tribes of North America. Between 1830 and 1836, Catlin made five trips to the American West. From his visits to 58 tribes, he produced 485 paintings and collected over seven tons of artifacts. These he exhibited in the United States and Europe as Catlin’s Indian Gallery. Throughout his life, Catlin struggled to keep the collection whole and pursued its acquisition by the newly created Smithsonian Institution. This lecture looks at Catlin’s life from his travels through the American West to the end of his career when, facing bankruptcy, he traveled to South America and rekindled his interest in painting and the scientific recording of Native American life.
The Duchamp Effect: Assemblage, Combines and Collage
Modern art changed forever with the French artist Marcel Duchamp’s submission of Fountain, a literal porcelain urinal, to the exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in 1917. Inspired by the European Dada movement, Duchamp’s use of play, chance and everyday objects changed art-making in America. We will begin by exploring how Duchamp’s ideas were disseminated through American musician John Cage’s work. Then we will look at how Cagean aesthetics filtered into assemblage, combines and collage works of the 1950’s through 1970’s. We will consider examples from the VMFA’s permanent collection, including those by: Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Morris, John Chamberlain, Richard Stankiewicx, James Rosenquist, Tom Wesselmann, Wallace Berman, Arman, and Ed Ruscha.
Audio Visual: Music in Art
Enter the world of music in art! This visual presentation delves into the unique depictions of musicians, instruments, notes and musical ephemera in a variety of works and media. From Picasso’s framed collages to Man Rays iconic photographs, the audio has greatly influenced the visual in 20th century 2-D and 3-D works of art.