Amy Peck

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) has shared new renderings of a major addition designed by SmithGroup. The McGlothlin Wing II will connect to another VMFA addition from 1985, the Mellon and Lewis West Wing. It will host special exhibitions, events, and a new cafe bar.

The VMFA has returned 41 pieces of ancient art in its collection to Turkey. Why it matters: The works were looted from a 6th century B.C. temple in the 1960s before making their way to Richmond.

Exhibitions opening in New York, Richmond and D.C. will remind us of the glories of this lately debased medium.

Summers in Virginia usher in a season of rest and relaxation, a time of taking in simple pleasures — a garden harvest, a day at the beach, a dip in a cool swimming pool. These scenes of leisure can be explored through the lens of Willie Anne Wright, A Virginia painter and photographer who captures the essence of the commonwealth’s rich stories and histories.

Dawoud Bey became well known for an approach to portrait photography that captured everyday people in their natural landscape: posing on sidewalks, in doorways, at barbershops; with a lover in a lush, manicured park, or a best friend in front of an ice cream parlor called Lady D’s. Sometimes his subjects were in motion, visibly navigating the physical and psychic distance between one location and the next. Bey’s style allowed his subjects’ radiance to shine through, for their stories and emotion...

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts highlights the photographer’s work that evokes the slave trade, the plantation system and the Underground Railroad through a contemporary lens.

This article is part of our Museums special section about how art institutions are reaching out to new artists and attracting new audiences.Guitarists and their music — from folk singers to rock ’n’ roll stars and protest songs — figure prominently in American history and culture, but the instrument has a notable heritage of its own.“The guitar itself can have meaning, other than simply being beautiful or making music,” said Mark Scala, chief curator at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, where “...