Traffic permitting, the Virginia Museum of Art is a quick trip up the road from Hampton Roads and, as is true of our own Chrysler Museum of Art, you don’t need a special exhibit to lure you into the car.
Instead, you can enjoy the particular pleasures of getting to know a permanent collection. Visit, revisit, pick out favorites, pretend to own one. It’s a nice feeling to have a relationship with a collection.
And Susan J. Rawles, Associate Curator of American Painting and Decorative Art at the VMFA, brought us exactly the glimpse we needed to lure us up the road during her lecture on February 27th.

The VMFA’s James W. and Frances Gibson McGlothlin Collection of American Art provides ample material to love- seventy-three works spanning a century from 1830 to 1930 and encompassing periods from the Hudson River School to Modernism.
Opened in November 2015 as a permanent installation, the collection was carefully and caringly assembled by a Virginia couple. Their love of the American art scene and dedication to their community now provides all of us an opportunity to enjoy a broad collection of American masterworks right in our own backyard. “Up the road.”
