The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) is an art museum in Richmond, Virginia, United States, which opened in 1936. The museum is owned and operated by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Private donations, endowments, and funds are used for the support of specific programs and all acquisition of artwork, as well as additional general support.
Considered among the largest art museums in North America for area of exhibition space, the VMFA's comprehensive art collection includes ancient art, African art, American art, British sporting art, and Himalayan art. Additionally, as part of their exhibit of decorative arts made by Fabergé, the museum boasts the largest public display of Fabergé eggs outside of Russia, owning five. One of the first museums in the American South to be operated by state funds, VMFA offers free admission, except for special exhibits.
The VMFA, together with the adjacent Virginia Historical Society, anchors the Museum District of Richmond, an area of the city known also as "West of the Boulevard".
The museum includes the Leslie Cheek Theater, a performing-arts venue. For 50 years, a theater company operated here, known most recently as TheatreVirginia. Built in 1955 as a 500-seat theatre within the art museum, it started as a community theater and also hosted special programs in dance, film, and music. In 1969, the director established an Actors' Equity/LORT company known as Virginia Museum Theatre, hiring both local actors and professionals from New York City or elsewhere. Some of its productions received national notice. In 1973, its production of Maxim Gorky's play Our Father transferred to New York, to the Manhattan Theater Club. Because of continuing financial problems, the nonprofit theater closed in 2002. After renovation, it reopened in 2011 as part of the museum to host a range of live performance events.
History
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.NY Times, Ibid. 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.
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.During state segregation, some casting of black actors had occurred for race-specific roles, such as maids and other servants, but Marat/Sade was the first VMT show to include African-American performers in roles not defined by race. While the production was praised by two Richmond newspapers, an editorial in the afternoon Richmond News Leader criticized Fowler for "latitudinarianism".Editorial, "The Thing at the Museum", Richmond News Leader, October 10, 1969
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).Program of the Virginia Museum Theater Repertory Company, Our Father, February 7–22, 1975Translated by William Stancil, VMT's Music director. 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.Rosenfeld, Megan, The Washington Post, Thursday, March 24, 1977Pahnelas, William, "Fowler Resigns, Cites Artistic Differences", The Commonwealth Times, March 29-April 4, 1977
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.Getter, Lisa, Vicki Kemper and Jonathan Peterson (2002-10-04). "5 Shot Dead in Suburban D.C. as Fear Spreads", Los Angeles Times 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.