The Fralin recollects the influence of Samuel Kootz

It’s a bit chilly in the air-conditioned exhibition room at The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA, but the temperature isn’t what’s giving Rebecca Schoenthal goosebumps. It’s the art. Specifically, it’s William Baziotes’ cool-toned, blue-hued “Night Form” and Adolph Gottlieb’s earth-toned pictograph, “The Sorceress,” hanging on a Fralin gallery wall, together for the first time […]

Matthew McLendon wants more at The Fralin

In January, The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia welcomed a director and chief curator, Matthew McLendon, formerly with Tate Britain in London, the Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College and The Ringling Museum of Art, the state art museum of Florida. While McLendon worked at The Ringling, the art blogazine […]

Fralin exhibition tells a story beyond the gallery walls

When Maximilian Schele De Vere arrived in Scott Nolley’s art conservation studio in Richmond, he was in rough shape. Covered in years’ worth of dust, tobacco residue and coal-fire furnace soot, Schele De Vere—or rather his portrait, rendered in oil paint on canvas by Louis Mathieu Didier Guillaume circa 1887—had fallen against a trash can […]

Kevin Everson looks to the night sky for comment on history

It’s a busy, blustery Tuesday on Grounds. Outside The Fralin Museum of Art, UVA students rush by in droves, pulling overcoats tight against the wind. Inside, I stand in darkness staring at craters on the moon. The air is hot and loud, filled by the whir and clank of unsteady projectors shining on gallery walls. […]