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An Educated Woman, the newest Cultural Heritage Project Exhibition, opens Friday, Jan. 22

New children’s station .....

The education department has added a new component to Level 1 of the Museum, an ART SPOT! This area encourages children to make their own art similar in style to artwork viewed in the exhibitions they have seen. This fun activity will help participants relate to the exhibitions on view in the museum galleris. Bring your children, grandchildren, family and friends to see the exhibitions and visit the new ART SPOT!

Exhibitions:

Matisse, Picasso, and Modern Art in Paris:
The T. Catesby Jones Collections

Opens December 11, 2009

"Lorette," a 1917 oil on panel by Henri Matisse (French, 1869-1954) is
among works in "Matisse, Picasso, and Modern Art in Paris," a
collaborative exhibition from VMFA and UVa. It was given to VMFA by T.
Catesby Jones.
(Photo by Katherine Wetzel, ©2009 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts)

Matisse, Picasso and Modern Art in Paris is a collaborative exhibition of the collections of T. Catesby Jones—a native of Petersburg, Trustee of VMFA, graduate of UVA Law School, and New York maritime lawyer.

In 1947, T. Catesby Jones bequeathed to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts his collection of modern painting and sculpture, focused on the School of Paris and represented by major figures such as Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Raoul Dufy, Juan Gris, Jacques Lipchitz, André Masson, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Georges Roualt.

His print and illustrated books collection, comprised of works produced in Paris during the first four decades of the twentieth century, went to the University of Virginia Library one year later, and since 1975 that group of works on paper has been a centerpiece of the University of Virginia Art Museum. This exhibition will bring all parts of the collection together for the first time, revealing its importance as an exemplary instance of the taste for the art of the avant-garde during the early decades of the twentieth century—and the importance of French artists and artists living in Paris of the modern age.

Related Events

“Picasso and the Fearless Print!”
Fenella Belle
Sunday, January 24, 2 pm
Fenella will present a lecture and demonstration of Picasso’s use of the reduction print process.

“The T. Catesby Jones Collection”
Dr. Matthew Affron, Professor of 19th and 20th Century Art and Curator of Modern Art at the University of Virginia Art Museum
Sunday, February 7, 2pm
Dr. Affron will discuss the origins and trajectory of the T. Catesby Jones Collection. He will also be delivering a gallery talk at 7:30 that evening in Emory & Henry’s Board of Visitors Lounge at the Van Dyke Center. His lecture at E&H will be titled “Collecting the Modern: T. Catesby Jones and Art in France.” It will be followed by a reception at the same location.

“Modernism and the Ethos of the Fin de Siecle”
Dr. Laurence Hare, Visiting Assistant Professor of History, Emory & Henry College
Sunday, February 21, 2 pm
Dr. Hare will discuss the air of European modernity occurring around the turn of the 20th century.

From These Hills: Contemporary Art in the Southern Appalachian Highlands

Continuing through February 14, 2010

William King Museum continues to celebrate the diversity of regional artistic talent with its biennial exhibition, From These Hills: Contemporary Art in the Southern Appalachian Highlands, a major exhibition of new works by artists working in all media in Southwest Virginia, Northeast Tennessee, Western North Carolina, Southern West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky.

This exhibition, opening Oct. 23, is guest-curated by Ray Kass, a painter and writer who lives in New York City and Blacksburg, Virginia, where he is Professor Emeritus of Art at Virginia Tech.

From These Hills defines William King Museum's commitment to the creative spirit of the artists who live and work in the Southern Appalachian Highlands. Artists featured in this years exhibition include: Ann Ropp, Bill Deel, Bracken Caldwell, Catherine Murray, Connie Bundy, Deborah Bryan, Denise Stewart-Sanabria, Derek Smith, Duane Cregger, Elizabeth Johns, Heather Harvey, Jan Foust Hurt, Jarata, Jean Hess, Jennifer Collins, Jennifer Cox, Jennifer Spoon, Kevin Inman, Kristi Taylor, Lindsey Kincaid, Marianne Gubler, Marilyn Hower, Marvin Tadlock, Mary Nees, Michael Murphy, Morgan LeMasters, Neil Staples, Perry Johnson, Robert Sulkin, Shane Snider, Steve Hutchins, Tamie Beldue, Travis Graves, Val Lyle, Vaughn Garland, and William Matthew Harvey.

The From These Hills series began just one year after the Museum opened in the spring of 1992 after a two-year renovation of its facility, the 1913 William King High School. FTH was conceptualized as an immediate standing program of the Museum's mission. Its purpose was and remains today two-fold: to showcase artistic trends in the region and to provide the region's artists with opportunities for professional growth through, not only the exhibition and its catalog, but importantly through contact with the guest curator and the resulting potential for wider exposure of their work. The 2009 exhibition will continue through Feb. 14, 2010.

An Educated Woman: Art from Girls' Schools and Women's Colleges

January 22 through July 11, 2010

“Should our daughters study art?  Yes, and upon a larger scale than boys; they are to build up and beautify our homes,” wrote W. S. Neighbors, President of Sullins College in Bristol, Virginia, in the early 1910s.  Neighbors’ emphasis upon the inclusion of art courses in the curriculum of women’s colleges was under scrutiny in the early twentieth century, but his ideas stemmed from traditions stretching hundreds of years into the past.  Beginning as a signifier of the type of “accomplishment” received through private or academy education and continuing as a popular component of women’s collegiate art departments, the act of creating beautiful objects is enmeshed in the history of women’s education in Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee.

The ornamental arts differ markedly from the art projects most students complete today.  In the infancy of women’s education, the term typically encompassed painting and drawing and various forms of needlework.  Now recognized as “schoolgirl art,” these pieces have come to symbolize a class and era in which a young woman’s suitability as a potential wife was determined by her ability to read, write, sketch, stitch, play a musical instrument, sing, and speak French.  Girls acquired these skills initially through private tutors, then later at small academies.  Gradually, more academic subjects took precedence over the ornamental arts, but they continued to be regarded as being so essential that they were retained as electives, even as communities founded small women’s colleges.  As Neighbors makes plain, women were now expected to cultivate an appreciation for beauty in the domestic sphere.  They continued to master painting and drawing, but they were also instructed in painting china, shaping wax flowers, carving wooden furniture, and painting tapestries, among other arts.

Linking sampler to school, An Educated Woman will highlight ornamental art projects and the history of the region’s many women’s educational institutions.  It will also explore real women’s use of their artistic talents beyond fulfilling their expected duties as wife and mother.

Related Events

Members’ & Lenders’ Prevue
Friday, January 22, 2010, 6 to 8 pm

Gallery Talk with Curator Elyse D. Gerstenecker
Tuesday, March 2, 7 pm

Girls only!  See the exhibit and create your own
ornamental art project inspired by the show. 
Tuesday, March 23, 7:30 pm 

Please note: You must be a museum member or a lender to the exhibition to attend the Prevue. Non-members who would like to attend are invited to become museum members at the door that evening.