August 12, 2019
This article is an excerpt from the museum magazine, VMFA, an exclusive benefit for museum members. See works from the Gee’s Bend quilters on display in the Cosmologies from the Tree of Life: Art from the African American South exhibition. Valerie Cassel Oliver, VMFA’s Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art,…
May 23, 2019
The works of art in the exhibition Cosmologies from the Tree of Life: Art from the African American South at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts embody stories that may remind you of your own family’s artistry, perseverance, and traditions passed down through generations. The art on view includes sculptures, quilts, paintings, and works on…
November 9, 2018
We recently had the opportunity to speak with Tressie McMillan Cottom, PhD, about VMFA’s current exhibition Howardena Pindell: What Remains To Be Seen. Cottom is an assistant professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University. She has spoken across the nation and the world on technology, higher education, race, gender, class, and social inequality. Her latest…
October 12, 2018
Pindell’s journey presented at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is unique to the artist but not unusual. We’ve heard the tale: the impressive work ethic of a brilliant black mind, occupying double roles, only to still fall short on respect from her white colleagues as well as the white-dominant art world. Pindell worked as…
August 21, 2018
Howardena Pindell has consistently broken new ground during her five-decades-long artistic career. In 1967, she was the first female African American to graduate from Yale University’s MFA program then began working as the first female black curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Her diverse body of art—from abstract canvases to photography…
March 26, 2018
The galleries at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts were full of a different kind of art — literature — at the African American Read-In (AARI). This annual event, which occurs during Black History Month, celebrates African and African American art and literature as community leaders read aloud in front of African and African American…
May 31, 2017
Double Vision to close June 3 at Richmond’s Black History Museum An exhibition scheduled to close early next month reflects the growing interaction between the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia. Even the focus of the exhibition—a lifetime retrospective of paintings by the late Murry DePillars…
February 17, 2017
“Three Folk Musicians” is one of the most renowned works by American artist Romare Bearden (1911–1988). Incorporating hand-painted papers and photographs torn from magazines, Bearden’s collages of this period present complex images of African American life from multiple perspectives. Music: “Music Box Rag”, performed by the Heftone Banjo Orchestra
February 16, 2017
VMFA mourns the recent passing of Richmond-born artist Benjamin Leroy Wigfall (1930-2017). When the museum purchased his painting Chimneys in 1951, Wigfall was only 21, the youngest artist to have a work enter VMFA’s permanent collection. Wigfall was interviewed by the museum in 2003 and 2016 and was the subject of a program held at…
September 6, 2016
Our names are Keisha Horne and Sydney Johnson, and we were the Andrew W. Mellon interns in Objects Conservation at VMFA during summer 2016. Both of us are recent college graduates—Keisha from James Madison University and Sydney from Virginia Commonwealth University—with bachelors’ degrees in art history and a strong interest in objects conservation. We wanted…
