Special Exhibitions and Gallery Installations 2012

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With an exciting lineup of special exhibitions, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts brings the world to Richmond in the form of great art representing the span of world cultures. VMFA is internationally recognized for its ambitious special exhibitions drawn from the world’s finest public and private art collections, as well as the museum’s permanent collection.

Exhibitions are subject to change. For the latest information, please visit www.vmfa.museum/exhibitions. General admission is always free. Some special exhibitions require an admission fee. 

Special Exhibitions:

Mummy: Secrets of the Tomb
November 19, 2011 – March 11, 2012
Ticketed, VMFA members free
Drawing on a selection of ancient Egyptian antiquities from the British Museum’s internationally famous collection, this blockbuster exhibition explores the life, mummification and afterlife of the Egyptian priest Nesperennub. With more than 100 objects, including human and animal mummies, a gilded mask, jewelry, canopic chests, monumental stone sarcophagi, statuary and tomb lintels, the exhibition immerses the visitor in the life and death of Nesperennub, a temple priest. An accompanying 3-D film presentation uses the most advanced scanning technology to take the spectator on a journey that unwraps the mummy of Nesperennub in vivid detail and reveals the secrets of life and death in ancient Egypt.  Curator: John Taylor, Assistant Keeper in the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum. 

Elvis at 21
December 24, 2011 – March 18, 2012
Ticketed, VMFA members free
Fifty-seven dramatic 1956 photographs taken by Alfred Wertheimer of Elvis Presley on the brink of international superstardom, including intimate images taken in Richmond during a visit for a performance, will be included in Elvis at 21. Photographs feature the recently revealed “mystery woman,” now a grandmother living in Charleston, S.C. Organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Services, the exhibition shows black-and-white photographs taken by Alfred Wertheimer of a baby-faced Elvis just as his career began, but before he was a recognizable rock-and-roll icon.

The Mourners: Tomb Sculptures from the Court of Burgundy
January 21– April 15, 2012
Free admission
The Mourners: Tomb Sculptures from the Court of Burgundy, an exhibition of 37 of the extraordinary Mourners of the Dukes of Burgundy from the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon, France, will be shown at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts January 21, 2012 through April 15, 2012, on the final leg of a multi-city U.S. tour. The elaborate tombs of the first Valois dukes of Burgundy, Philip the Bold and his son, John the Fearless, are among the masterpieces of late medieval sculpture in Europe. These monuments feature the sculpted figures of the deceased rulers lying in state atop the tombs, while below a procession of mourning figures appears to slip in and out of the arcades of a cloister. The tombs were originally installed in a monastery outside Dijon, but since the early nineteenth century they have been on display in the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Dijon. Renovations of the museum’s medieval galleries have created the occasion for American audiences to discover for themselves these celebrated sculptures.

Jacob Lawrence’s Legend of John Brown
February 4– June 10, 2012
Free admission
This special installation highlights an important recent acquisition of American art—Jacob Lawrence’s The Legend of John Brown graphic series. Consisting of 22 individual silk-screen prints, the portfolio is based on Lawrence’s same-size gouache paintings from 1941—owned by the Detroit Institute of Arts—that explore the life of the controversial abolitionist. In 1977, when the paintings had become too fragile for public display and accessibility, the Detroit museum commissioned Lawrence to reproduce them as limited-edition screenprints. Each painting was originally displayed with the artist’s accompanying text, which builds on the powerful visual narrative of the images. Lawrence’s John Brown series was one of many such historical epics he produced in the 1930s and 1940s, examining the lives and experiences of African Americans—from heroic 19th-century figures like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass to the early 20th-century cultural phenomenon of the Great Migration—work for which he continues to be celebrated today. The portfolio comes to VMFA as a partial gift from Richmond collector and museum patron Derrick Johnson in celebration of its 75th anniversary.

Diana Al-Hadid: Trace of the Fictional Third
March 10 – September 2, 2012
Free admission
Al-Hadid makes complex sculptures that seem in a state of flux, suggesting both incompletion and decay. Underlying her large-scale, baroque forms are a wide array of influences, including ancient Biblical and mythological narratives, Arab oral traditions, Gothic church construction, Western painting, Islamic ornamentation, and scientific advances in physics and astronomy. The exhibition features a single new monumental sculpture—Trace of a Fictional Third—that interweaves landscape, architecture, and the human figure. It is accompanied by a selection of new, heavily worked graphite drawings that shed light on Al-Hadid’s creative process. Al-Hadid received her MFA in sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and currently lives and works in New York.

Making History: 20th-Century African American Art
March 31 – June 10, 2012
Free admission
An innovative collaboration between VMFA and VCU’s Museum Studies graduate program, this student-organized exhibition features more than 50 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by renowned and lesser known 20th-century African American artists. Drawn from the local collection of Margaret and John Gottwald, the exhibition explores black artistic production and patronage at mid-century through work once associated with the Barnett Aden Gallery (1943-1969), a pioneering and influential private gallery located in Washington, D.C.—among the first with an integrated stable of artists and patrons. A cross-section of art by internationally acclaimed Elizabeth Catlett, 97, forms the core of the exhibition.

Maharaja: The Splendors of India’s Great Kings
May 19 – August 19, 2012
Ticketed, VMFA members free
VMFA is the only East Coast venue for this exhibition, organized by the Victoria & Albert Museum, that presents the rich, fascinating art and material culture of India’s maharajas (“great kings”). The word maharaja evokes images of jewel-dripping kings whose wealth was matched only by their absolute power. This stereotype is reassessed through explorations both of the multifaceted nature of Indian kingship and of the changing roles played by the maharajas against the backdrop of a radically transforming political landscape—from the collapse of the Mughal Empire in the early 18th century, through the incorporation of India into the British Empire in the 19th century, to the emergence of the independent states of India and Pakistan in the mid-20th century. On display will be both Indian and European works, including paintings, photography, textiles, dress, jewelry, jeweled objects, metalwork, arms and armor, and furniture.  Highlights will include a royal elephant saddle, a golden throne, a silver horse-drawn carriage, and jewels from important princely collections by European designers, such as Jaeger-LeCoultre and Cartier. Curator: Anna Jackson, Keeper of the Asian Department at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Bold, Cautious, True: Walt Whitman and American Art of the Civil War Era
June 2 – August 26, 2012
Free admission
Timed to coincide with the sesquicentennial of the Civil War and Emancipation, VMFA is reprising the exhibition Bold Cautious True: Walt Whitman and American Art of the Civil War Era, co-organized by the Dixon Gallery and Gardens and the Katonah Museum of Art. The Richmond presentation of this thought provoking exhibition, which takes its title from Whitman’s poem “As Toilsome I Wander’d Virginia’s Wood,” showcases one of VMFA’s seminal works – Eastman Johnson’s A Ride for Liberty – The Fugitive Slaves, March 2, 1862 – in addition to more than 30 paintings, sculpture, prints and rare books from noted public and private collections across the country. While preserving the central focus of the original exhibition – the layered meanings and moods of 1860s American art as viewed against the poetry of Walt Whitman, one of America’s chief “scribes” of the war – VMFA’s reprise expands the number of featured artists. By juxtaposing the writings of Whitman with various landscapes and genre scenes by Conrad Wise Chapman, Frederic Church, Robert Scott Duncanson, David Johnson, Winslow Homer, among others, the exhibition encourages a fresh understanding of American’s visual and verbal responses to the national crisis. A fully-illustrated catalogue, published by the Dixon, accompanies the exhibition.
 

Ongoing Special Exhibitions:

Tristin Lowe: Mocha Dick
Through January 29, 2012
Free admission
Tristin Lowe’s colossal sculpture Mocha Dick is a 52-feet-long recreation of the real-life albino sperm whale that terrorized early 19th-century whaling vessels near Mocha Island in the South Pacific. Mocha Dick, described in appearance as “white as wool,” engaged in battle with numerous whaling expeditions and inspired Herman Melville’s epic Moby Dick (1851). Lowe worked with the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia to make the sculpture: a large-scale vinyl inflatable understructure sheathed in
white industrial felt.

Modern Masters: Sean Scully and John Walker
Through January 29, 2012
Free admission
This exhibition features monumental paintings by two of today’s most accomplished painters, Sean Scully and John Walker. Promised gifts from Pamela K. and William A. Royall Jr. on the occasion of VMFA’s 75th anniversary, these works affirm the unique capacity of paint to evoke the immateriality of light. Rounding out the exhibition are a suite of twelve photographs by Scully and four other recent paintings by Walker.

The Majestic and the Mundane: Landscape Photographs by Ansel Adams and Lewis Baltz
Through March 2012
Free admission
Ansel Adams and Lewis Baltz occupy opposite ends of the landscape photography spectrum. Adams’ series Portfolio Three: Yosemite Valley features pristine, sublime views of the waterfalls, trees, and mountains of California’s treasured national park. In San Quentin Point, Baltz turned his camera on a far more prosaic subject: a wasteland littered with trash and located between the infamous San Quentin prison and one of the wealthiest suburbs in California. This exhibition brings these two series into dialogue and explores each artist’s highly differentiated photographic perspective as well as their shared concern for the environment.

Gallery Installations:
Fabergé
The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts' Pratt collection includes the largest public assemblage of Fabergé imperial Easter eggs outside Russia. The full Pratt collection numbers approximately 200 creations from the Fabergé workshops. The collection was formed between 1933 and 1946 by Lillian Thomas Pratt of Fredericksburg, Va., the wife of General Motors executive John Lee Pratt. In 1947, she bequeathed several hundred pieces of Russian art, many from the Fabergé workshops, to VMFA.

The Fabergé Gallery will be on view until August 1, 2012, at which time it will be deinstalled for a traveling exhibition and gallery redesign.

East Asian
Since Chinese and Japanese works first entered VMFA’s collection in 1941, the museum has assembled approximately 2,000 works from China, Korea and Japan, spanning the history from the Neolithic period to the present. This summer, VMFA will celebrate the reopening of the East Asian art galleries, showcasing 240 artworks in Chinese, Koran and Japanese galleries. For the first time in the museum’s history, Korean artworks will be on view in a dedicated space made possible through the support of the Korea Foundation in Seoul. Many of the works on display have been acquired in recent years and will be on view for the first time at VMFA.

VMFA Statewide Exhibitions:
Van Gogh, Lichtenstein, Whistler
University of Mary Washington, through December 11, 2011

Goya, Dalí, Warhol
Radford University, January 19 – March 2, 2012

Civil War Redux
Piedmont Arts Association, through December 31, 2011

Fleeting Glimpse
Piedmont Arts Association, through December 31, 2011

The Actor’s Image
Reynolds Homestead, January 4 – February 2012

VMFA Studio School Exhibitions:
Different Perspectives in Painting, through January 12, 2012
Green: The Color & Concept, January 30 – March 2, 2012
Developing Family: Photographs of Three Generations, March 9 – April 12, 2012
The Art of Collage & Assemblage, April 20 – June 1, 2012
The Alchemy of Pots & Prints VII, June 8 – August 17, 2012

VMFA Pauley Center Exhibitions:
Lure: Photographs by Pam Fox, through March 18, 2012
Fecundity’s Magic Carpet: Recent Work by Janet Grahame Nault, March 24 – July 22, 2012

Amuse Restaurant Exhibitions:
Finish.Line.: Paintings by Ed Dolinger, through March 4, 2012
A New Naturalism: Paintings by Shaun Whiteside, March 5 – July 8, 2012

VMFA at Richmond International Airport:
Middle Ground: Paintings by Loie Hollowell, through February 27, 2012
What Most are Waiting For: Paintings by Jeff Majer, February 28 – June 25, 2012

About the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
With a collection of art that spans the globe and more than 5,000 years, plus a wide array of special exhibitions, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) is recognized as one of the top comprehensive art museums in the United States. The museum’s permanent collection encompasses more than 23,000 works of art, including the largest public collection of Fabergé outside Russia and one of the nation’s finest collections of American Art, Art Nouveau and Art Deco. VMFA is home to acclaimed collections of English Silver and Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, British Sporting and Modern & Contemporary art, as well as renowned South Asian, Himalayan and African art. In May 2010, VMFA opened its doors to the public after a transformative expansion, the largest in its 75-year history. Programs include educational activities and studio classes for all ages, plus fun after-hours events. VMFA’s Statewide Partnership program includes traveling exhibitions, artist and teacher workshops, and lectures across the Commonwealth. VMFA is open 365 days a year and general admission is always free. For additional information, telephone 804-340-1400 or visit www.vmfa.museum.

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