The story
Founded by John Barton Payne and Virginia General Assembly on Mar 27, 1934.1
Origins
The VMFA has its origins in a 1919 donation of 50 paintings to the Commonwealth of Virginia by Judge John Barton Payne. During the Great Depression, Payne collaborated with Virginia Governor John Garland Pollard to gain funding from the federal Works Projects Administration under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, to augment state funding and establish the state art museum in 1932. Payne's gift had been made in memory of his late second wife Jennie Byrd Bryan Payne and his mother Elizabeth Barton Payne.
The site for the museum was chosen on Richmond's Boulevard, near the corner of a contiguous six-block tract of land used as a veterans' home for Confederate soldiers. Additional services were provided to their wives and daughters.
The main building of the VMFA was designed by Peebles and Ferguson Architects of Norfolk. It has been described as Georgian Revival or English Renaissance. Commentators have said the architects expressed influence from Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren. Construction began in 1934. Two wings were originally planned, but only the central portion was then built. The museum opened on January 16, 1936.
Major acquisitions and first addition, 1940–1969
In 1947, the VMFA was given the Lillian Thomas Pratt collection of some 150 jeweled objects created by Peter Carl Fabergé and other Russian workshops, including the largest public collection of Fabergé eggs outside of Russia. That year the Museum also received the "T. Catesby Jones Collection of Modern Art". Further donations in the 1950s came from Adolph D. Williams and Wilkins C. Williams, and from Arthur and Margaret Glasgow. They established the museum's oldest funds used for art acquisitions. In 1951, the museum bought the abstract painting Chimneys, created by a 20-year-old art student named Benjamin Leroy Wigfall at the historically Black Hampton Institute. He was the youngest person whose work had ever been purchased by the museum and was one of its earliest acquisitions of a painting by a Black artist.
In 1948, Leslie Cheek, Jr. was selected as director of the museum, where he served until 1968. During these decades, he introduced many innovations and was noted as having had significant influence on the course of the institution. His obituary in the New York Times said that he "transformed [the VMFA] from a small local gallery to a nationally known cultural center." Cheek in 1953 introduced the world's first "Artmobile", a mobile tractor-trailer that carried exhibits to rural areas (prior to museum galleries being established in distant areas). In 1960, he was the first in the United States to introduce night hours at an art museum.
Cheek worked with his curators and designers to cultivate a degree of theatrical "showmanship" in exhibits, such as velvet drapery for the Fabergé collection, a "tomb-like" setting of the museum's Egyptian exhibit, and using music to set the mood in the galleries. To enhance the museum as a cultural center, Cheek gained approval for construction of a theater, used for museum and outside societies' performing events in dance, music, and film.
During his tenure, Cheek oversaw construction of the first addition, built in 1954 by Merrill C. Lee, Architects, of Richmond, and supported financially by Paul Mellon. Cheek had gained board approval to construct a theater as part of this addition. The 500-seat theater was intended to provide space for a community theater, and for annual programs of the Virginia societies for dance, music, and film, all within a central cultural facility.
Virginia Museum Theatre
What is now known as the Leslie Cheek Theater, the 500-seat proscenium theater within VMFA was originally built in 1955 and known as the Virginia Museum Theatre. It was designed under the supervision of director Cheek, a Harvard/Yale-educated architect. He consulted with Yale Drama theater engineers Donald Oenslager and George Izenour for the state-of-the-art facility. Cheek envisioned a central role for a theater arts division in the museum. The theater brought the arts of drama, acting, design, music, and dance to the art galleries. It also hosted programs of the Virginia Film Society.
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Through the 1960s, the Virginia Museum Theater (VMT) hosted a museum-sponsored volunteer or "community theater" company, under the direction of Robert Telford--link is not to this Robert Telford, who was in charge in 1965-66 season. The company presented subscription seasons of live drama to thousands annually. Local players and occasional guest professionals offered musicals (Peter Pan, e.g.), dramas (Peter Shaffer's The Royal Hunt of the Sun), and classics (Shakespeare's Hamlet). VMT also served as a venue for annual programs of the Virginia Music Society, Virginia Dance Society, and Virginia Film Society.
Cheek retired from the museum in 1968, but was an adviser to the VMFA trustees about the next director of the theater arts division.
In 1969, Keith Fowler was appointed as artistic director of VMT. Under Fowler, VMT continued to serve as the headquarters for the Dance, Film and Music societies. He is known for having expanded and upgrading the live theater operations, establishing Richmond's first resident Actors Equity/LORT company. Both community actors and New York-based professionals became part of this. The troupe's core members included Marie Goodman Hunter, Janet Bell, Lynda Myles, E.G. Marshall, Ken Letner, James Kirkland, Rachael Lindhart, and dramaturg M. Elizabeth Osborn.
Fowler retained a focus on classics and musicals, but added an emphasis on new plays and U.S. premieres of foreign works. His debut production in 1969, Marat/Sade, written by Peter Weiss, was produced with the first racially integrated company on the VMT stage. While the production was praised by two Richmond newspapers, an editorial in the afternoon Richmond News Leader criticized Fowler for "latitudinarianism".
The company became known as VMT Rep (for "repertory"). Fowler attracted national notice in 1973 with his production of Macbeth, starring E.G. Marshall. Critic Clive Barnes of The New York Times hailed it as the "'Fowler Macbeth'... "splendidly vigorous... probably the goriest Shakespearean production I have seen since Peter Brook's 'Titus Andronicus'." As Fowler heightened the professional quality of the theater, VMT led Richmond into what some recall as a golden age of theater. In 1974 the VMT staged a celebrated production of Purlie that was directed by Albert Reyes and choreographed by Nat Horne.
The company commissioned and produced eight American and world premieres, introducing new plays by Americans Romulus Linney and A.R. Gurney, as well as by major foreign authors, such as Harold Pinter, Joe Orton, Athol Fugard, and Peter Handke. In 1975, the Soviet Arts Consul provided coverage on Moscow Television for Fowler's U.S premiere of Maxim Gorky's Our Father (originally Poslednje in Russian). This VMT production transferred to New York City, where it premiered at the Manhattan Theater Club.
Over eight years, VMT's subscription audience increased from 4,300 to 10,000 patrons. Fowler resigned in 1977 after a dispute with VMFA administration over the content in VMT's premiere of Romulus Linney's Childe Byron.
Artistic directors Tom Markus (1978-1985) renamed the company and its playhouse "TheatreVirginia". As with all American professional not-for-profit performing arts organizations, TheatreVirginia ran mounting deficits for years. Despite this, artistic director Terry Burgler (1986-1999), who succeeded him, had a successful operation. He later became a co-founder in 2004 of the Ohio Shakespeare Festival.
The museum board of trustees continued to underwrite the deficits to maintain the theater, but their priority was the museum. Tensions arose in this arrangement, and the board was increasingly concerned about the viability of the theater. A study in 1987 showed that dealing with a board that was essentially constituted to oversee the art museum was difficult for the theatre company. In addition, the city of Richmond was still characterized as having a "historical resistance" to the offerings of professional theatre.
Problems continued into the early 21st century, when a loss of some state funding occurred because of budget problems. In addition, the museum wanted to regain the theater space for other uses. The theater was expected to relocate in 2003, and was projected to be an anchor tenant in a new Virginia Performing Arts Center, but that was not planned for completion until 2007, and by late 2002, the theater had not found temporary relocation space. In 2002, a series of fatal sniper attacks in the metropolitan DC area and northern Virginia region killed five people in quick succession. Residents were fearful of going out, and the theater suffered reduced audiences and additional lost income. In December 2002, the board decided to close TheatreVirginia. It struggled financially to operate in a state-supported museum.
For eight years, the theater was dormant. Renovation of the space and its revival as a live performance space was completed in 2011; that year, it was renamed as the Leslie Cheek Theater in honor of its first director, who had also been director of the museum for two decades. The theater's reopening has returned live performing arts to the heart of the Virginia museum. The Leslie Cheek Theater does not support a resident company, but is available for bookings of special theater, music, film, and dance showings.
Building expansions 1970–1990
The second addition, the South Wing, was designed by Baskervill & Son Architects of Richmond and completed in 1970. It featured four new permanent galleries and a large gallery for loan exhibitions, as well as a new library, photography lab, art storage rooms, and staff offices. A gift of funds from Sydney and Frances Lewis of Richmond in 1971, provided for the acquisition of Art Nouveau objects and furniture.
A third addition, known as the North Wing, was designed by Hardwicke Associates, Inc. of Richmond and completed in 1976. It included an adjacent sculpture garden with a cascading fountain, designed by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin. The North Wing was designed as the new main entrance for the museum, with a separate dedicated entrance added for the theater. It provided three more gallery areas – two for temporary exhibitions and one for the Lewis Family's Art Nouveau Collection while also housing a gift shop, members' dining room, and other visitor functions. However, the curved walls of the North Wing's "kidney-shaped" design proved to be functionally awkward and impractical, and it was later replaced. The 1976 wing and sculpture garden were later demolished to make room for the 2010 McGlothlin Wing.
In the following years, the Lewis and Mellon families proposed major donations from their extensive private collections, and helped provide the funds to house them. In December 1985, the museum opened its fourth addition, the 90,000-square-foot (8,400 m2) West Wing. The architects, Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates of New York, were chosen by the Lewises based on their appreciation of the firm's 1981 design for the Best Products headquarters building north of Richmond. The wing now houses the collections of these two families.
Redesigned campus and McGlothlin wing expansion 1991–2010
In 1993, the Commonwealth of Virginia transferred the care of the Robinson House from the Department of General Services to VMFA. The nearly 14-acre property of Robinson House, a former veterans camp, was transferred between state agencies to the museum. Beginning in 2001, the VMFA created a master plan for development of this land in what was otherwise a built-out residential part of the city.
By the 1990s, the functions of the adjacent Confederate Home for Women had ceased, and its last residents moved out. In 1999, the former home was adapted for use as the Center for Education and Outreach (now the Pauley Center), housing the museum's Office of Statewide Partnerships.
The VMFA undertook a $150-million building expansion to increase the museum's gallery space by fifty percent, adding 165,000 square feet (15,300 m2). The new wing opened in 2010 and was named in honor of patrons James W. and Frances G. McGlothlin. The museum reoriented the McGlothlin Wing by reinstating the entrance on the Boulevard, the same as with the original 1936 entrance.
The design includes a three-story atrium named for Louise B. and J. Harwood Cochrane, with a 40-foot (12 m)-tall glass wall to the east and broad expanses of glass walls to the west, and a partially glazed roof. The London-based architect Rick Mather collaborated with Richmond-based SMBW Architects in the design of the building, while landscape architecture was handled by OLIN. Landscaping included a new 4-acre (16,000 m2) sculpture garden, named for philanthropists E. Claiborne and Lora Robins.
American art is the major focus of exhibitions in the McGlothlin Wing. In 2008, the museum received a $200,000 grant from the Luce Foundation to support the installation and interpretation of its American collections. Mather's design for the VMFA expansion earned a 2011 RIBA International Award for architectural excellence.
Rumors of War and another expansion 2010–present
In 2019, Rumors of War was installed on the front lawn of the museum facing Arthur Ashe Boulevard after being displayed in Times Square.
In June 2021, the VMFA announced that architectural firm SmithGroup was designing a $190 million expansion of the museum and a renovation of current spaces such as the Evans Court and Leslie Cheek Theater. SmithGroup's preliminary designs for the new wing will add significant gallery space for African, African American, and 21st-century art, along with improved visitor amenities and event spaces. The design emphasizes sustainability, accessibility, and stronger connections between the museum and its surrounding campus.
From Wikipedia’s article on Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5