Depictions 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…

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The Agecroft Story

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…

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Impressionable Youth

Themes of childhood and family recur in nineteenth-century French Impressionist painting, from Berthe Morisot’s experimental self-portraits with her daughter Julie Manet, to Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s everyday scenes of his three sons and their nanny. Drawing primarily upon works from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, this lecture will closely…

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VMFA’s Little Giant Controversy: Stuart Davis, Modernism, and Cold War Politics

In 1950, Stuart Davis’ Little Giant Still Life went on view at VMFA as part of an avant-garde American painting exhibition.  When the cubist-inflected canvas entered the permanent collection, the museum found itself in the midst of a highly publicized debate between leading New York critics and Virginia traditionalists.  This lecture relates the unfolding scandal…

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A Tale of Two Sofas: Belter at VMFA

Following several years of new research and an extensive conservation campaign, a magnificent pair of sofas in the VMFA collection have emerged with a captivating history and a distinctive look.  Produced by the celebrated furniture maker John Henry Belter over 160 years ago, the near-identical sofas graced the homes of powerful American businessmen and socialites…

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The Pursuit: Frederic Remington and the Buffalo Soldiers

Few artists are as closely associated with the American West as Frederic Remington (1861 – 1909). Best known for his illustrations, bronze sculptures, and paintings of cowboys, he also found a favorite subject in U.S. Cavalrymen, especially the hard-riding soldiers of the 9th and 10th Regiments, known also as Buffalo Soldiers. This lecture explores Remington’s images of these renowned African American regiments and, in particular, his striking canvas, The Pursuit (1896 – 98) in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ collection.

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Henry Box Brown: Famous Fugitive, Trans-Atlantic Performer

Henry Brown escaped from slavery by shipping himself in a box from Richmond to Philadelphia. This bold feat was only the first act of a remarkable career. “Resurrected” from the box as Henry Box Brown, he appeared at antislavery meetings as a singer and speaker. In 1850, Brown produced a moving panorama, a kind of giant painted scroll presented in a theater, called Mirror of Slavery and toured it around New England and then across the Atlantic. Trace this remarkable journey with Jeffrey Ruggles, former Curator of Prints and Photographs, Virginia Historical Society, and author of The Unboxing of Henry Brown, Library of Virginia, 2003.

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