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Richmond, Virginia Weekend
April 15, 2011 to April 17, 2011The Museum for African Art Travel Program is providing an extraordinary experience for a
limited number of museum members. We will be traveling to Richmond, Virginia to take advantage of a rare constellation of art events.
Friday, April 15-We will travel to Richmond and assemble at the historic Jefferson Hotel for a welcome drink and dinner and discussion of the program.
Saturday, April 16-We will spend most of the day at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts which will be presenting the exhibition Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria which the Museum for African Art organized in collaboration with the Fundacion Marcelino Botin, Spain and the National Commission for Museums and Monuments, Nigeria. This is the first major exhibition of the art of Ife ever to be organized and very likely is the last. Ife art, unlike the art of most African peoples, has largely remained in Africa, so that only by cooperating with the Nigerian Museums has it been possible to put together an exhibition of this magnitude and importance. The Nigerian Museums have been extraordinarily generous and have lent all the major masterpieces from their collections and from the private collection of the Oni of Ife. Ife art in stone, bronze and terra cotta is breathtakingly beautiful in its refined naturalism. Members of the museum group will have a private tour of the exhibition conducted by Richard Woodward, Senior Deputy Director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
The VMFA has just opened a greatly enlarged gallery of traditional African art, incorporating its recent acquisition of the collection of Robert and Nancy Nooter, a private collection greatly admired for the superb quality of its objects. We will visit this collection and discuss its major works. By sheer serendipity, the VMFA will be simultaneously showing an exhibition of Picasso’s own collection of his work from the Picasso Museum in Paris. Viewing these works along with the Ife sculptures and the Nooter collection will provide an unmatched opportunity to reflect upon the seminal influence of African sculpture on the development of modern western art. This exhibition will not be seen anywhere else in the eastern United States.
We will have lunch in the private dining room of the museum.
Dinner will be on your own. We will be happy to make suggestions of restaurants in the Richmond arts district.
Sunday, April 17-We will travel by luxury bus to nearby Hampton University Museum located on the historic Hampton University campus to visit their important collection of Congolese art, presented to them by an alumnus, William H. Sheppard, who was a missionary in the Congo in the late 19th century. (The Museum for African Art featured this collection in the catalogue of ART/artifact.) The collection of art from the Kuba people is particularly important because it was collected in situ with important factual information. Hampton is opening the museum especially for our group and will provide a private tour. The Hampton campus is a designated National Historic Landmark district. We will have lunch in at nearby Magnolia House Bed and Breakfast after visiting the campus.
After lunch we will return to Richmond and from there to our home cities.
Virginia should be gorgeous in mid-April, with every tree and shrub in full bloom. The trip will provide pleasure for the palate as well as for the eyes and spirit as we sample the fine traditional cooking of the region. We will be staying in the landmark Jefferson Hotel in Richmond, designed in the late 19th century by the architects of the 42nd Street Library located in New York City.
Attention: Collectors from the West Coast – these exhibitions will not travel to California. This is your only chance to see them – and in the congenial company of fellow collectors and of our staff.
Program Details: Program cost $650 Double Occupancy (Single supplement available at $225)
The trip provides: Two nights in deluxe rooms at the Jefferson Hotel, dinner on Friday, lunches on Saturday and Sunday, transportation to and from the Virginia Museum and to Hampton, entrance fees to the exhibitions and lectures by staff of the two museums.
Transportation to and from Richmond and your home city, breakfast for the weekend and dinner on Saturday are the responsibility of the individual participants.
Museum for African Art travel is open to Museum members. Participation is limited. Deadline for reservations is March 11, 2011. Please email Michelle Pinedo, Director of Travel Programs mpinedo@africanart.org or call (718) 784-7700 x104 for additional information.
