Sarah Sargent

The “Dean Dass: New Paintings and Works on Paper” exhibition on view at Les Yeux du Monde offers the double pleasure of Dass’ luscious landscapes paired with his more mystical media-rich works on paper. A professor of printmaking at UVA, Dass took up landscape painting in 1994 while on sabbatical in New Hampshire. He was […]

I was completely captivated by Millicent Young’s radiant show at Chroma Projects. Composed of horsehair and found wood, Young’s work thrums with nature and speaks to ancient mysteries that our modern selves can only dimly grasp. “The known, the unknown, and the unknowable is a trinity that has been with me a very long time,” […]

If you’ve been in the vicinity of the Ruth Caplin Theatre and the Arts Commons at UVA, you’ve no doubt noticed some unusual activity in the bowl-shaped area between the buildings. Renowned installation artist Patrick Dougherty, together with a group of community and UVA volunteers, is hard at work weaving a sculpture made from locally harvested […]

Born in 1878 in the town of Saint-Étienne near Lyon, France, Émilie Charmy was groomed for the proper profession of teaching. But Charmy, whom I had never heard of before the Fralin show, had other ideas, taking up painting instead. Initially, she focused on traditional scenes of domestic life in an Impressionist style. But, she […]

Ansel Adams’ photography is one of those things that’s easy to dismiss because we’ve seen so much of it reproduced in calendars, outsize posters, and the like. But after spending time with the actual photographs now on view at UVA’s Fralin Museum in “Ansel Adams: A Legacy” through October 13, I rediscovered the magic in […]

The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center encapsulates the seminal role played by the quest for and the denial of public education in the history of African-Americans. Promoted by Thomas Jefferson as key to the success of democracy, education was denied to black people in Southern states between 1800 and 1835. Despite this, African-Americans managed […]

If you’re in need of an instant mood-elevator, I suggest you head straight over to the McGuffey Art Center where dazzling light and vibrant color (and some pretty nifty painting) is on full display at a group show featuring the work of Karen Blair, Jessie Coles, Priscilla Long Whitlock, and Krista Townsend. Still lifes, landscape, […]

One of America’s great art connoisseurs and patrons, Paul Mellon was quoted as saying that he and his wife “almost never buy a painting or drawing we would not want to live with or see constantly.” Having cut his teeth on father Andrew Mellon’s renowned art collection (which formed the nucleus of the National Gallery of Art), Paul Mellon was graced with an extraordinarily refined eye.

Frederick and Lucy S. Herman began collecting drawings as college students, and over the ensuing 50 years amassed a considerable collection of more than 250 works on paper that showcase the myriad techniques and approaches within the field.