Virginia Museum of Fine Arts with Photos and Videos

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, or VMFA, is an art museum in Richmond, Virginia, in the United States, which opened in 1936.

The museum is owned and operated by the Commonwealth of Virginia, while private donations, endowments, and funds are used for the support of specific programs and all acquisition of artwork, as well as additional general support. Admission itself is free (except for special exhibits). It is one of the first museums in the American South to be operated by state funds. It is also one of the largest art museums in North America. VMFA ranks as one of the top ten comprehensive art museums in the United States.

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, together with the adjacent Virginia Historical Society, anchors the eponymous "Museum District" of Richmond (alternatively known as "West of the Boulevard").

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has its origins in a 1919 donation of 50 paintings to the Commonwealth of Virginia by Judge and prominent Virginian John Barton Payne. Payne, in collaboration with Virginia Governor John Garland Pollard and the Federal Works Projects Administration, secured federal funding to augment state funding for the museum in 1932. Eventually, a site was chosen on Richmond's Boulevard. The site was toward the corner of a contiguous six-block tract of land which was then being used as an American Civil War veterans' home, with additional services for their wives and daughters (the state having earlier acquired title in exchange for helping to subsidize the operations).

The main building was designed by Peebles and Ferguson Architects of Norfolk, and has been alternately described as Georgian Revival and English Renaissance, deliberately taking cues from Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren. Construction began in 1934. Two wings were originally planned, yet only the central portion was actually built. The museum opened on January 16, 1936.

In 1947, the VMFA was given the Lillian Thomas Pratt Collection of some 150 jeweled objects by Peter Carl Fabergé and other Russian workshops, including the largest public collection of Fabergé eggs outside of Russia. The Museum also received in 1947 the "T. Catesby Jones Collection of Modern Art". Further donations in the 1950s came from Adolph D. Williams and Wilkins C. Williams and from Arthur and Margaret Glasgow, in particular, the museum's oldest funds used for art acquisitions.

Leslie Cheek Jr., whose father built Cheekwood, became director of the museum in 1948. His tenure was noted as having had a significant impact on the course of the institution; his obituary in the New York Times noted that he "transformed [the VMFA] from a small local gallery to a nationally known cultural center."

Cheek's innovations included, in 1953, the world's first "Artmobile", a mobile tractor-trailer that housed exhibits with the purpose of reaching rural areas (prior to the presence of local museum galleries); and in 1960, in order to be accessible to a broader public, the introduction of the first night hours at an art museum.

Cheek cultivated a degree of theatrical "showmanship" in the exhibits during this time, such as velvet drapery for the installation of the Fabergé collection, the "tomb-like" setting of the museum's Egyptian exhibit, and using music to set the mood in the galleries. It was also during his time as director that the museum's first addition was built in 1954 by Merrill C. Lee, Architects, of Richmond. The wing, funded in part by Paul Mellon, included a theater, with the intent of combining the performing arts and visual arts in a single facility.

The Leslie Cheek Theater, the 500-seat proscenium theater constructed in 1955 within VMFA, known originally as the Virginia Museum Theater, has seen several transitions in its 60-year history. It was designed under the supervision of director Cheek, who was a Harvard/Yale-educated architect and who consulted with Yale Drama theater engineers Donald Oenslager and George Izenour to have a state-of-the-art facility. Cheek envisioned a central role for a theater arts division in the museum. The theater brought the arts of drama, acting, design, music, and dance alongside the static arts of the galleries. From its beginnings through the 1960s, the Virginia Museum Theater (VMT) was the home for a VMFA sponsored volunteer or "community theater" company, under the direction of Robert Telford. The company presented subscription seasons of live drama to thousands annually, with talented local players and occasional guest professionals offering many popular musical comedies (Peter Pan, e.g.), spectacular dramas (Peter Shaffer's The Royal Hunt of the Sun), and classics (Shakespeare's Hamlet). VMT also served annual programs for patrons of the Virginia Music Society, Virginia Dance Society, and Virginia Film Society.

Cheek retired from the museum in 1968 but served to advise the VMFA trustees on the appointment in 1969 of Keith Fowler as the new head of the museum's theater arts division and artistic director of VMT. Under Fowler, VMT continued to serve as the headquarters for the Dance, Film and Music Societies while he expanded live theater operations, incorporating some community actors and New-York based professionals into Richmond's first resident Actors Equity/LORT company, a troupe that included core members Marie Goodman Hunter, Janet Bell, Lynda Myles, E.G. Marshall, Ken Letner, James Kirkland, Rachael Lindhart, and dramaturg M. Elizabeth Osborn. Fowler retained a focus on classics and musicals, but added an emphasis on new plays and the U.S. premieres of foreign works.

His debut production, Marat/Sade (the first racially integrated company on the VMT stage), brought controversy into the heart of the museum. VMT, known now as VMT Rep (for "repertory"), drew national focus when in 1973 its production of Macbeth, starring E.G. Marshall, led Clive Barnes of The New York Times to hail it as the "'Fowler Macbeth'... "splendidly vigorous... probably the goriest Shakespearean production I have seen since Peter Brook's 'Titus Andronicus'." As Fowler expanded the professionalism of the theater, VMT led Richmond into what some recall as a golden age of theater—especially as the company commissioned and produced eight American and World Premieres, introducing new plays by Romulus Linney and A.R. Gurney, as well as by major foreign authors, Pinter, Orton, Fugard, and Handke. International attention arrived in 1975 when the Soviet Arts Consul provided coverage on Moscow Television for Fowler's U.S-premiere of Maxim Gorky's Our Father (originally Poslednje), a VMT production which went on to a New York City premiere at the Manhattan Theater Club.

Over eight years, VMT's subscription audience grew from 4,300 to 10,000 patrons. Fowler resigned in 1977 in a dispute with VMFA administration over the content in VMT's premiere of Romulus Linney's Childe Byron. Successive artistic directors Tom Markus and Terry Burglar renamed the company and its playhouse "TheatreVirginia." As with all American professional not-for-profit performing arts organizations, TheatreVirginia ran mounting deficits for years, underwritten by trustees. In 2002, the burden of operating in a state-supported museum (and with an audience suddenly panicked to stay at home during a series of regional sniper attacks) forced TheatreVirginia to close its doors. For eight years the theater lay dormant, until revived in 2011 as the Leslie Cheek Theater.

The theater's renovation and reopening have reintroduced live performing arts to the heart of the Virginia Museum. At present the Leslie Cheek Theater does not support a resident company, but remains available for special theater, music, film, and dance showings.

The second addition, the South Wing, was designed by Baskervill and Son Architects of Richmond and completed in 1970. It featured four new permanent galleries and a large gallery for loan exhibitions, as well as a new library, photography lab, art storage rooms and staff offices. A gift of funds from Sydney and Frances Lewis of Richmond in 1971, provided for the acquisition of Art Nouveau objects and furniture.

In 1976, a third addition, the North Wing, was completed. Designed by Hardwicke Associates, Inc., Architects, of Richmond. Adjacent to this was built a sculpture garden with a cascading fountain by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin. The wing served as the new main entrance for the museum, with a separate dedicated entrance for the theater. It also added three more gallery areas – two for temporary exhibitions and one for the Lewis Family's Art Nouveau Collection, as well as a members' dining room, gift shop, and other visitor functions. However, the curved walls of its "kidney-shaped" design proved to be functionally awkward and impractical, a factor in its later replacement. Eventually, the 1976 wing and sculpture garden were demolished to make room for the 2010 McGlothlin Wing.

In the following years, the Lewises and the Mellons proposed major donations from their extensive private collections, as well as helping to provide the funds to house them. In December 1985, the museum opened its fourth addition, the 90,000 square feet (8,400 m2) square foot West Wing. The architects, Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates of New York, were chosen by the Lewis's following their 1981 design for the Best Products headquarters building north of Richmond. The wing now houses their respective collections.

By the 1990s, the functions of the Confederate Home for Women had ceased, and its last residents moved out. In 1999, the Center for Education and Outreach (now the Pauley Center), housing the museum's Office of Statewide Partnerships, opened in the former women's home. Eventually, the remainder of the veterans camp property was transferred between state agencies to the museum, allowing it create a unified plan (begun in 2001) for what now totaled 13 1/2 acres of land in an otherwise built-out residential part of the city. In 1993, the Commonwealth of Virginia transferred the care of the Robinson House from the Department of General Services to VMFA.

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