Exploring Richmond: The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is one of the largest comprehensive art museums in the U.S., with nearly 50,000 works of art spanning 6,000 years of world history.
The VMFA is an educational institution that serves "to collect, preserve, exhibit, and interpret art, to encourage the study of the arts, and thus to enrich the lives of all," according to its site. Opened during the Great Depression on January 10, 1936, the VMFA was established as the state's flagship art museum and a symbol of Virginia's political and business leaders' belief in the value of art, with its foundation marking "the beginnings of an unusual partnership between private donors and state legislators."
One of its special exhibitions currently on display is Whistler to Cassatt: American Painters in France. This exhibit – which you can see snippets from throughout these photos – tells the story of "late 19th- and early 20th-century painters who left the United States as expatriates and returned to shape the course of American art." After training under the influence of Paris' École des Beaux-Arts and studying "old master" works at the Louvre, these American painters took traditional practices, modernism, and the growing French avant-garde philosophies and styles and blended them with American individualism, creating stunning works of art in the process.
This exhibition features more than 100 paintings by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, Cecilia Beaux, and John Singer Sargent, among many others, and it is well-worth the visit while on display until July 31.
We love getting to know our Richmond city better, and exploring the VMFA's collection is one of the must-do's while in town! Curious how Retex gets involved with the Greater Richmond community? Click the button below to learn about our monthly volunteer days with Habitat for Humanity.
