LOOK HERE is a series of four exhibitions that highlight the depth and breadth of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ rich collection of world art.

From jewels and still lifes to sculptures and masks, the series showcases world-class paintings and objects that connect continents, cultures and centuries -- and also connect Virginians with art from their state’s art museum.

“The LOOK HERE exhibitions offer the opportunity to experience treasures from VMFA not just in Richmond, but in Roanoke and Martinsville, in Abingdon and Norfolk, and across Virginia,” says Alex Nyerges, VMFA’s director.

Each of the four LOOK HERE exhibitions features a distinctive theme - Dazzle, Feast, Speed and Mystery. The first three will travel statewide.

LOOK HERE capitalizes on the fact that VMFA is undergoing the largest expansion in its history and many galleries are closed during construction. “While VMFA offers a wealth of resources for statewide audiences, it is unusual for us to show such significant works from our permanent collection in other venues across Virginia,” says Susan Ferrell, head of the museum’s statewide partnership program.

Education and accessibility have been key components of VMFA’s mandate since its founding 70 years ago, Nyerges explains. “Many people have not had the opportunity to visit VMFA; however, since the ‘LOOK HERE’ series launched in 2006, more than 40,000 Virginians have experienced art from VMFA in their own communities.”

"LOOK HERE demonstrates more clearly than ever VMFA’s statewide mission and commitment to educating all Virginians in the arts,” says Nyerges.

Admission to all LOOK HERE exhibitions will be free.

Speed

“All over the world and throughout history, speed and motion in art can mean much more than just going fast,” begins Sandra Rusak, one of the two curators for LOOK HERE Speed.

Opening Saturday, May 10 at the University of Virginia Art Museum (UVaAM) in Charlottesville, Speed explores how artists use movement to create spirited and expressive masterpieces. The exhibition will remain on view through August 3.

“From the sleek beauty of a racing yacht to the energetic brushwork of the abstract expressionist painters, expressions of speed in art can communicate motion and emotion,” Rusak says.

Speed TV Spot

Aiesha Halstead, the exhibition’s other curator, says artists take advantage of people’s innate ability not only to see motion in real life but also to perceive it in static art.

Brush strokes in Willem de Kooning’s work, Lisbeth’s Painting engage visitors to Speed. (Photo by Travis Fullerton)

Aiesha Halstead, the exhibition’s other curator, says artists take advantage of people’s innate ability not only to see motion in real life but also to perceive it in static art.

“By observing simple brush strokes, we are able to calculate potential movement. Speed will encourage an exploration of how artists of many cultures and through various media have dramatically conveyed speed and motion in their work,” Halstead says.

Rusak is VMFA’s associate director for education and statewide partnerships, and Halstead is VMFA’s coordinator of exhibitions planning.

Works to be featured in the Charlottesville show include American artist James E. Buttersworth’s 19th-century painting A Racing Yacht on the Great South Bay, Virginia native Stephen Fox’s 1990 painting Roadside, a 19th or 20th-century Eshu dance hook made by a Yoruba artist and an 18th-century Dakini sculpture made of bronze with gold leaf from Tibet.

Halstead says Speed is “an experiment in cross-cultural art interpretation, following a single concept down several avenues of discovery and rediscovery.”

It’s all about Speed at UVaAM
In conjunction with Speed, the University of Virginia Art Museum will present two companion programs focusing on how artists use movement – or implied movement – to great effect.

Summer Arts Camp for Kids
This July, The University of Virginia Art Museum will host its annual arts academy for students entering grades 4– 12. The academy combines high-quality studio programs with explorations of the Museum’s summer shows. This year’s theme is speed, in conjunction with the special exhibition of the same name.

“The program’s goal is to connect art-interested youth with the inspirational possibilities of experiencing and creating artwork,” explains Jennifer Van Winkle, Education Program Coordinator at UVaAM. Campers will be mentored by arts educators and professional artists. All sessions run Monday through Friday from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm, and three sessions will be offered.

Session 1 July 7 - 11
Session 2 July 14-18
Advanced Academy July 21-25

Read and print a Summer Arts Camp application.
This document is a PDF file requiring Adobe® Acrobat® Reader.

University of Virginia Art Museum will be the last stop for Speed on its statewide tour. After opening at VMFA headquarters in Richmond in 2007, Speed traveled first to the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University in Roanoke and then to the Peninsula Fine Arts Center in Newport News.

UVaAM is also the final venue in VMFA’s successful LOOK HERE exhibition series, which included the themed shows Dazzle and Feast, in addition to Speed. These traveling exhibitions highlighted masterworks selected from the museum’s outstanding collections of world art.

Partners Again for Art in Paris
Next year, VMFA and UVaAM will present Matisse, Picasso and Art in Paris. This exhibition, scheduled to open in March of 2009 in Charlottesville, and organized by both institutions, will offer a window onto modern art of the 1920s and 1930s and focus on the School of Paris and its major figures, including Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Raoul Dufy, Juan Gris, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and others. Artworks to be featured have been drawn from The T. Catesby Jones Collections held by both the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the University of Virginia.

Students pause before Sundial, a 1929 sculpture by American artist Boris Lovet-Lorski. (Photo by Travis Fullerton)

CO-CURATORS: Sandra Rusak, VMFA’s associate director for education and statewide partnerships, and Aiesha D. Halstead, VMFA’s coordinator of xhibitions planning.

Speed Itinerary

Charlottesville, University of Virginia Art Museum, May 10-August 3, 2008

PREVIOUS EXHIBITIONS in the LOOK HERE SERIES

Mask, Dan Culture (Liberia, Ivory Coast) Wood, hair, fiber, clay, 22 (with coiffure) x 6½ x 10 inches, The Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund, (Photo by Katherine Wetzel, © 2005 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts)

Mystery

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Mystery, explored how the inscrutable has long played a significant role in art.

"Throughout history and across cultures, many works of art were created for mysterious functions: to house spirits, protect communities, aid prayer or ensure fertility," says Robin Nicholson, VMFA's associate director for exhibitions and one of the exhibition's curators.

"Artists have also employed mystery as a powerful component, to convey meaning through symbols, to trigger emotions, or to pique curiosity," he says. The exhibition will remain on view through Dec. 30 and is free and open to the public.

Masks especially evoke a sense of ritual, power and mystery, says another of the show's curators, Sandy Rusak, who is also VMFA's associate director for education and outreach. "Masks are one of the most widespread art forms in Africa, and Mystery features a 20th-century wood mask with its original fiber coiffeur made by a Dan artist," she says. "This mask would help the village with community problems and guide the council of elders."

In addition to enigmatic masks, Mystery also explores cultural interpretations of the spirit world and the afterlife. Nicholson uses an Egyptian work, False Door Stele from 2500-2350 BCE, as an example. (A stele is an upright stone slab, usually bearing markings.) "The stele is a door that - it was literally believed - led to the world of the dead," he explains.

Like the Egyptian false door stele, The God of the Bay of Roses by the 20th-century Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí serves too as a portal into another world, says independent scholar Sara Desvernine Reed, who is also one of the exhibition's four organizers.

Salvador Dalí's The God of the Bay of Roses, 1944, may serve as a symbolic portal into the mysteries of the subconscious mind. (Photo by Ron Jennings, © 2007 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts)
© 2007 Salvador Dali, Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Reproduction, including downloading of ARS member works, is prohibited by copyright laws and international conventions
without the express written permission of Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

"This 1944 image's enigmatic qualities invite us into a kind of dream world, a place where we literally peer through the hole of the standing nude figure. Through art historical research, we have learned that the pedestal contains a portrait of the artist's wife, Gala, yet many of the symbols in the painting remain unexplained. To me, these two works of art offer us an art-historical treasure hunt that invites viewers to participate in finding the answers to these visual mysteries," she says.

While masks and ancient symbols evoke mystery, the universe also fascinates artists as a great unknown.

Works such as Latvian-American artist Vija Celmins' painting Untitled (Galaxy), 1988-1992, "remind us how a vision of the stars is a mystery shared by many cultures across time," Nicholson says. "The painting captures the universal sense of wonder at our place within the cosmos."

Aiesha Halstead, VMFA's coordinator of exhibitions planning and the fourth organizer of "Mystery," has her own mysterious favorite: a 1995-96 sculpture by German-American artist Kiki Smith titled Ice Man.

Smith's sculpture, which is about 6 1/2 feet tall, was inspired by the discovery in the early 1990s of a 5,300-year-old male body frozen in an Alpine glacier, Halstead explains. "The artist recreates in bronze this character filled with humanity, even warped as it is from thousands of years in shifting ice. Ice Man exudes grace and power in the face of death," she says. "And death is after all the ultimate mystery."

Other works to be featured in the exhibition include a Chinese burial mask dating to the 10th-12th century; a 17th-century textile, the Mandala of Sitatapatra, from Tibet; French artist Pierre-Jacques Volaire's 18th-century painting The Eruption of Vesuvius; Georgia O'Keeffe's 1930 painting White Iris; and Virginia artist Sally Mann's 1998 photograph Untitled #9 from her Deep South series.

"With art from diverse ages that span thousands of years and many cultures - Egypt, Africa, Eastern and Southern Asia, Europe, Russia, Latin America, and the United States - Mystery offers a fascinating exploration of both the familiar and the strange," Nicholson says.

The LOOK HERE series is sponsored by SunTrust, with support from the Commonwealth of Virginia. Additional support has been provided by the Richard S. Reynolds Foundation, the Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans Exhibition Endowment, the Fabergé Ball Endowment, the Fabergé Society, and The Council of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

"SunTrust has long been a community partner in Virginia, and we are pleased to continue our relationship with VMFA to present this series of outstanding exhibitions," says C.T. Hill, chairman, president and CEO of SunTrust Bank, Mid-Atlantic. "We believe that by investing in today's cultural resources, we are investing in the prosperity of tomorrow's communities."

Jean Schlumberger (French, 1907-1987), Pectoral Cross, 1960, Emeralds, sapphires, aquamarines, diamonds, 18 carat gold, 5½ x 3¾ x 1 inches, Collection of Mrs. Paul Mellon. (Photo by Katherine Wetzel © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts)

Dazzle

Dazzle, the first exhibition in the LOOK HERE series, presented finely crafted objects in gold, silver, gemstones and other precious materials from VMFA’s collections. Dazzle celebrated objects of luxury, powers and ceremony.

“Dazzle demonstrated how such objects transform the ordinary into the extraordinary: crowns turn wearers into rulers; jeweled headdresses transform ordinary people into gods or heroes; cups and vessels transmute their contents into substances of high status; and elaborate and beautiful jewelry makes the human body into something special,” says Dr. Mitchell Merling, the exhibition’s co-curator and VMFA’s Paul Mellon Curator and head of the department of European Art.

Severin Roesen, (German, active in America 1848-1871), Still Life, circa 1860, oil on canvas, 29¼ x 36½ inches, The Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund. (Photo © 2005 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts)

Feast

LOOK HERE Feast offered "a delectable selection of art from VMFA's superb collections that inspired the senses and whetted the appetite," said Della Watkins, head of metropolitan education at VMFA and one of the exhibition's co-curators. Feast was the second exhibition in the LOOK HERE series to travel around the state.

Exhibition highlights included sumptuous still lifes from American and French masters; ritual vessels from ancient Chinese and Central and South American cultures that served to honor the dead and empower the living; art from around the world that celebrates the masculine power over life and death embodied in the hunt; and works from hearth and table that reveal the traditionally feminine emphasis on nurturing and nourishing, Watkins explains.

“Objects and paintings from VMFA's Contemporary collection stood side by side with others from a wide range of traditional cultures, prompting us to strengthen our appreciation for continuity with the past and to question some of our long-held assumptions about food and society," added Dr. Lee Anne Hurt, Assistant Curator of Ancient American Art and Assistant to the Director of VMFA, Alex Nyerges.