Strange bedfellows: Munch and Johns at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

Asked to name two artists least likely to be paired in a museum exhibition, you could do worse than to suggest Edvard Munch and Jasper Johns. The former is the father of expressionism, maker of The Scream and other paintings filled with anxiety and existential dread; the latter is best known for his cool and detached depictions of commonplace objects such as flags and targets—works that laid the foundation for pop art and other contemporary art movements.

Clare Leighton in Virginia

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

The Bird Cage (for Thomas Hardy’s Under the Greenwood Tree) by Leighton, 1940. Wood engraving on paper. On view at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Leighton was raised in England, where she was well known for her illustrations of classic books by authors such as Emily Brontë and Thomas Hardy and for her impressive writings and wood engravings about …

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts reopens

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

With an atrium, a forty-foot-high glass wall, new galleries, restaurant, café, and sculpture garden, the reopening of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) on May 1 is the latest in a series of important museum renovations and one of the most anticipated. The 165,000 square-foot expansion, designed by the London-based American architect Rick Mather and the Richmond firm SMBW, …

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Editorial Staff

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) in Richmond recently announced the acquisition of the Ludwig and Rosy Fischer collection of German Expressionist art—widely considered one of the finest groupings of material in the world. Assembled by the couple between 1905 and 1925 while living in Frankfurt, Germany, the Fisher collection comprises over 200 works that includes oil paintings, sculptures, …