Adjusting the lens: Photographer Lola Flash deconstructs stereotypes

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 […]

Warm welcome: Group show at McGuffey invites colorful observations

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, […]

Fralin Museum’s “Corot to Cézanne” paints a portrait of the collectors

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.

Jean Hélion’s journey through abstraction at the Fralin Museum of Art

“Jean Hélion: Reality and Abstraction,” currently on view at UVA’s Fralin Museum of Art presents a small, yet rich collection of this under-appreciated artist’s work. The eight paintings and numerous works on paper are both handsome works of art and revealing souvenirs from Hélion’s artistic journey “through and then away from abstract art.” Curated by […]

“Picasso, Lydia and Friends” at Les Yeux du Monde

Picasso was notoriously superstitious, preoccupied with the supernatural, eroticism and death. A fabulist of sorts, he salted his work with a vibrant iconography that embraced these aspects of his character. But Gasman also saw him as an essentially moral being, trying to combat evil through his art. She was incensed, not only that Arianna Huffington, […]

Rob Tarbell and Douglas Boyce fuse visual art and musical composition

A collaboration between visual artist Rob Tarbell and composer Douglas Boyce, “Bird-like Things in Things Like Trees” was conceived two summers ago during an artist residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Auvillar, France. While there, both men became captivated by a distinctive birdsong. Their unsuccessful quest to identify the bird became […]