On view through March 13, 2005, is "Selections: 20th-Century Latin American Art in the VMFA Collection," featuring paintings, prints, photographs and sculpture by artists from the Americas and the Caribbean.
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
By Don Dale
"Senor de Papantla" ("Man from Papantla"), 1934-35, by Manuel Alvarez Bravo (Mexican, 1902-2002); silver print; 9_ x 7-1/8 inches. (Photo ? Estate of Manuel Alvarez Bravo)
The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts gallery complex presents a panorama of world art spanning creative achievements from ancient times to the present.
On view through March 13, 2005, is "Selections: 20th-Century Latin American Art in the VMFA Collection," featuring paintings, prints, photographs and sculpture by artists from the Americas and the Caribbean. Works by Fernando Botero, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Rafael Ferrer, Jos� Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera and Hemilce Saforcada span the decades from the mid-1920s through the 1980s in the VMFA permanent collection. The exhibition presents an array of styles including Art Deco, Social Realism, Mexican Modernism and Abstraction, while highlighting portraiture and printmaking techniques.
Outstanding features of the VMFA permanent galleries include the Mellon collections of British Sporting Art and French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, including nine original waxes and seven bronzes by Edgar Degas; the Lewis collections of American and European art since World War II and Art Nouveau, Arts and Crafts, Art Deco, and Modern decorative arts; the Pratt Collection of Russian imperial Easter eggs and objects of fantasy from the workshops of master jeweler Peter Carl Faberg�; European and American masterpieces of painting, including works by Francisco Goya, John Singer Sargent and Claude Monet; the collection of Ancient, Classical and Egyptian art, including a rare, life-sized marble statue from the 1st century AD of the Roman emperor Caligula; one of the world?s leading collections of the art of India, Nepal and Tibet; and an extensive collection of English silver.
The museum?s $108-million building expansion, now under way, will transform the 13-acre campus. The design by Rick Mather + SMBW will provide a work of contemporary architecture that will feature a five-level glass-and-stone structure that will add more than 100,000 square feet of space to the existing 240,000-square-foot museum, a 600-car parking deck, and the creation of the E. Claiborne and Lora Robins Sculpture Garden. Also on view at the museum is "The New VMFA: Building for the Future," a continuing exhibition that presents a detailed model of the building and site, a video movie and computer-animated fly-through, floor plans, and a photomural of a dramatic new atrium that will join the existing structure to the expanded building.
VMFA is at 200 N. Boulevard (take exit 78 from Interstate 95/64). The galleries are open Wednesday through Sunday from 11 to 5. Visitors are encouraged to keep the museum free to all by making a donation ($5 suggested). The museum building houses a public cafeteria, The Arts Caf�, and an extensive sales shop.
For general museum information, telephone 804/340-1400 or visit the VMFA Web site: www.vmfa.state.va.us
