Amy Peck

This survey at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts gathers a range of dazzling objects to show how the empire developed a luxurious and recognizable visual language.

The Viginia Museum of Fine Arts has announced a donation of nearly 2000 photographs from the Joy of Giving Something Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to the photographic arts. The gift comprises works spanning the 19th century and the present day by more than 450 artists. The photographs come from the holdings of financier and former Dreyfus Corporation chief Howard Stein (1926–2011), who began collecting photography in the 1980s. A notable underwriter of photography exhibitions and books, Stein...

George Washington has long been something of an American visual cliché. When the Russian diplomat and artist Pavel Svinin visited the United States in the early 19th century, he found it “noteworthy that every American considers it his sacred duty to have a likeness of Washington in his house, just as we have images of God’s Saints.” Today, the country is no less prone to canonizing versions of patriotism, though they go well beyond art. As the nation’s...

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 “...

“The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse” surveys the past hundred years of artistic expression by Black artists who have lived or worked in the American South. The exhibition claims that the culture and aesthetics of Southern hip-hop constitutes an American art form. It firmly situates the musical genre within the lineages of interdisciplinary Black cultural production, including and referencing forms not often recognized by museums, such as Black fashion, arc...