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University of Richmond Museums present three new exhibitions

For the first time since early spring 2020, University of Richmond Museums is presenting three new exhibitions, all of which are open to the public. Museums reopened to the community in March 2022.

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For the first time since early spring 2020, University of Richmond Museums is presenting three new exhibitions, all of which are open to the public. Museums reopened to the community in March 2022.

“We’re delighted to welcome the campus and the greater Richmond communities back to our spaces, with a slate of exhibitions and programs that showcase student scholarship and creativity and artistic innovators of our time,” said Elizabeth Schlatter, interim executive director. “We will also welcome numerous faculty and students to our exhibitions this semester as part of their course work in our continuing efforts to advance the educational mission of the University.”

The three new exhibitions, which open to the public next week include:

  • Duane Michals: The Portraitist
  • Therefore I Am: Portraits from the Joel and Lila Harnett Print Study Center
  • Annual Student Exhibition

University of Richmond Museums are free and open to the public, no appointment necessary. Hours of operation are Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. and Thursday from 1-7 p.m. For more information about directions, exhibitions, and programs, visits museums.richmond.edu.

Exhibition details include:

Duane Michals: The Portraitist is on view in the Harnett Museum of Art, located in the Modlin Center for the Arts, Aug. 24 through Nov. 18.

The exhibition presents the first comprehensive overview of inventive photographic portraits by one of the medium’s most influential artists. Best known as a pioneer who broke away from established traditions of documentary photography in the 1960s, Michals is widely recognized for his ability to navigate between imposing his style and allowing his sitters to express themselves, and for the sequences he assembles to convey personal visual narratives, often adding handwritten messages and poems on the photographic print surface.

More than 125 portraits are included in the exhibition, many of which were recently discovered in a workroom in his brownstone building in New York City. Frequently commissioned to create portraits of actors, writers, musicians, and others, among the wide-ranging selection for the exhibition are images of artist Andy Warhol with his mother Julia Warhola, musicians Benny Goodman and Branford Marsalis, the original cast of “Saturday Night Live”, and actors Meryl Streep and Tilda Swinton.

Therefore I Am: Portraits from the Joel and Lila Harnett Print Study Center is on view in the Modlin Center for the Arts Atrium and Booker Hall Aug. 24 through July 7, 2023.

The exhibition presents a selection of portraits spanning six centuries and examines the various roles that portraiture has played in portraying the identity of the sitter. Historically, portraiture has been used by society’s elite to communicate messages of power, prosperity, and beauty. With recent advances in technology such as digital cameras and smartphones, portraiture has become omnipresent in society today. The exhibition encourages the viewer to think about how we consume and interact with portraiture in our everyday lives, whether it be scrolling through group photos on social media or taking a selfie.

Highlighted artworks include Reigning Queens (Queen Beatrix) by Andy Warhol, a portrait of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands that belongs to a screen print series featuring four ruling queens of the 1980s. Reigning Queens, with its bold color blocks and larger than life composition, exemplifies the allure of the celebrity portrait in a Pop Art style.

The Annual Student Exhibition will be on view Aug. 24 through Sept. 22 in the Harnett Museum of Art. Selected by the visual arts faculty, the exhibition features work by visual media and arts students during the University’s 2021-22 academic year. About 30 artworks are in the exhibition, which range from mixed media and video to sculpture and printmaking.

Exhibits that remain on view include:

Gee’s Bend Prints: From Quilts to Prints is on view through July 7, 2023 in the Modlin Center Booth Lobby.

The prints in this exhibition are inspired by the quilts of Gee’s Bend, Alabama. African American women of this remote community have created hundreds of quilts for more than a century. The quilts have been recognized as “some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced,” as noted by Michael Kimmelman, The New York Times art critic.

Several of the younger generations of quilters have made etchings based on small-scaled maquette quilts. Collaborating with master printers at Paulson Fontaine Press in Berkeley, California, the artists used innovative techniques to transfer the quilt design to an etching that highlights the strong patterns, textures, and compositions of traditional Gee’s Bend quilts. The artists featured in the exhibition include Louisiana Bendolph, Loretta Pettway, Mary Lee Bendolph, and Essie Bendolph Pettway.

Cabinet of Curiosity Reimagined: Museum Studies Seminar is on view through May 5, 2023, in the Department of Art & Art History.

Cabinets of curiosity, or “wunderkammer,” were the primary mode of displaying collections among European royals and aristocrats from the mid-16th through mid-18th centuries, showcasing natural specimens, cultural artifacts, and works of art. These cabinets fell out of fashion with the advent of scientific classification and museum development in the 18th and 19th centuries. In response to the resurgence of the cabinet display format in the modern museum world, this exhibition examines the purpose and power of museums –– their developing methods of collection and curation over time, often controversial acquisition of objects, and ability to inspire and influence audiences.

The cabinet features selected works of art and natural specimens from the collections of the Lora Robins Gallery.

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Trevor Dickerson is the Editor and Co-Founder of RVAHub.

Arts & Entertainment

12th annual Richmond Bluegrass Jam set for April 22nd benefitting military veterans and families

The free, family-friendly event features 20 of the region’s best bluegrass and Americana bands playing on multiple stages for nine straight hours, all to raise money for military veterans and their families through two local organizations.

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The Richmond Bluegrass Jam will return for its twelfth year on April 22, 2023, from 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., at American Legion Post 354, on the banks of the James River in Midlothian, Va. This is the second year the Jam is being held at the American Legion Post after a previous multi-year run at the Cultural Arts Center at Glen Allen.

The free, family-friendly event features 20 of the region’s best bluegrass and Americana bands playing on multiple stages for nine straight hours, all to raise money for military veterans and their families through two local organizations: the Richmond Fisher House, a home away from home for the families of veterans and active-duty soldiers recuperating at Richmond’s McGuire Veterans Medical Center; and Liberation Veteran Services, which provides housing and care for veterans in crisis.

Fans are strongly encouraged to make tax-deductible donations to the Richmond Fisher House and Liberation Veteran Services at the event or online at rvabluegrassjam.com. Over the past eleven years, the event has raised more than $204,000 for the families of military men and women.

The bands—all of which play at no charge in support of the Richmond Fisher House and Liberation Veteran Services—include Tara Mills Band, Cary Street Ramblers, Josh Grigsby and County Line, Cook County Bluegrass, Slack Family Bluegrass Band, and more.

The event also will feature local craft beverages and Richmond’s food trucks.

“We’re excited to bring the Richmond Bluegrass Jam back to American Legion Post 354 after a successful event last year,” says Tim Gundlach, president of RVA Bluegrass Jam, Inc., the event’s organizer. “This new location along the James River is not only inspiring, but also further connects the Jam with our military community. This year, we’re expanding our support of our military veterans and their families by raising money for both the Richmond Fisher House and Liberation Veteran Services. We’re proud to partner with these two extraordinary organizations.”

In addition to listening to the scheduled bands, attendees are encouraged to bring their own instruments. Several open jam areas will be available, as well as an instrument check station.

American Legion Post 354 is located in Midlothian, Va. Parking will be available at nearby James River High School, 3700 James River Rd., with free shuttles running throughout the day.

More information at rvabluegrassjam.com and on Facebook at facebook.com/rvabluegrassjam.

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We need your help. RVAHub is a small, independent publication, and we depend on our readers to help us provide a vital community service. If you enjoy our content, would you consider a donation as small as $5? We would be immensely grateful! Interested in advertising your business, organization, or event? Get the details here.

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Arts & Entertainment

Husband-and-wife duo bringing new restaurant concept to former Mill on MacArthur space

The deal closed Monday for an undisclosed amount. Sperity Real Estate Ventures’ Nathan Hughes worked the deal.

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From Richmond BizSense:

Barely a month after its closure, The Mill on MacArthur restaurant space in the Bellevue neighborhood is set to be reborn.

Husband-and-wife duo Rawleigh and Jaya Easley purchased The Mill’s lease at 4023 MacArthur Ave. and its equipment and are planning to open a new restaurant in its place called Neighbor.

The deal closed Monday for an undisclosed amount. Sperity Real Estate Ventures’ Nathan Hughes worked the deal.

Continue reading here.

Will you help support independent, local journalism?

We need your help. RVAHub is a small, independent publication, and we depend on our readers to help us provide a vital community service. If you enjoy our content, would you consider a donation as small as $5? We would be immensely grateful! Interested in advertising your business, organization, or event? Get the details here.

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Arts & Entertainment

Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU’s bevy of spring exhibitions run the gamut

An international group exhibition studying abstraction and a monumental new public artwork by Navine G. Dossos for ICA’s iconic facade kick off the 2023 spring season

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The Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University (ICA at VCU) has announced its Spring 2023 season, featuring a group exhibition and corresponding public art installation, both organized by ICA Senior Curator and Director of Programs, Sarah Rifky, as well as hybrid performances as part of the Test Pattern series. Additionally, Misread Unread Read Reread Misread Unread Reread (MURRMUR), an ongoing research framework that opened in Fall 2022 with the self-publishing pavillion by Rafael Domenech, will continue through 2023 with further iterations and programs by artists and educators.

Installed across the ICA’s multiple galleries and spaces, So it appears, runs through July 16, 2023. The exhibition features nineteen artists from around the world whose works appear inscrutable at first glance—but upon closer examination, tangible, acutely urgent narratives begin to emerge. Grappling with the paradox of how to represent the unrepresentable, the collected artists have surfaced abstraction as a visual strategy—a tactic for encoding, encrypting, and indexing otherwise invisible realities and disasters, as well as speculative futures. Formal abstraction, color fields and conceptual minimalism act as repositories for stories of carcerality, injustice, enslavement, the invisibility of migrants, environmental racism, and sonic warfare, among other realities.

Though created at different times (from 2004 to the present) and in vastly disparate contexts across fourteen different countries, the works presented in So it appears reveal surprising affinities in their approaches, subtleties and associations. Seen together, they invite visitors to reflect on the interconnectedness of the manifold global crises.

Featured artists include Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Monira Al Qadiri, Alexander Apóstol, Navine G. Dossos, Torkwase Dyson, Basmah Felemban, Žilvinas Kempinas, Agnieszka Kurant, Dinh Q. Lê, Jeewi Lee, John Menick, Novo (Reynier Leyva Novo), Trevor Paglen, Walid Raad, Tomás Saraceno, Pak Sheung-Chuen, and Levester Williams. Tasmania-based artist Tricky Walsh and New York–based audio artist and producer Sharon Mashihi will also be in residence throughout the exhibition’s run and will produce new works to be presented on April 21st on the occasion of the ICA’s fifth anniversary.

Concurrently, artist Navine G. Dossos will present a public work, McLean (2023), on ICA at VCU’s iconic N. Belvidere facade, on view for one year, February 24, 2023 – January 7, 2024. For this visually spectacular work, the artist adapted one hundred gouache paintings she created between 2018 and 2020, each panel in response to a news article published in the wake of the heinous murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi—a resident of McLean, Virginia—in October 2019.

Through this series, Dossos has developed a lexicon of symbols that stand in for the absent picturing of the case. The work is rendered in Dossos’ double take on Islamic and geometric arts, yet instead of lines and shapes, Dossos composes her intricate work through graphic icons, a representation of the narrative thread, encompassing multiple forms of technology, different individuals, nation-states, law enforcement agencies and human rights organizations. McLean is developed from Dossos’ project No Such Organization (2020) and which will be shown as part of So it appears.

Continuing from the 2022 Fall season is Misread Unread Read Re-read Misread Unread Re-read (MURRMUR), a ten-month curatorial framework and publishing program committed to expanding how we think about exhibitions and what it means to read, publish and distribute art, books and ideas. Developed in conversation with participating artists and educators, MURRMUR seeks to break down, massage, map and circulate information through experiments, improvisations and alternative curriculums. MURRMUR is organized by Senior Curator and Director of Programs, Sarah Rifky, and Assistant Curator of Commerce and Publications, Egbert Vongmalaithong.

MURRMUR presents two new programs in April 2023 and one new installation of research, references and a materials library designed by Sam Taylor in February 2023, organized by Egbert Vongmalaithong, ICA Assistant Curator of Commerce and Publications. On view February 24–July 16, 2023, in the ICA Shop + Cafe, Taylor’s installation provides objects that can be activated with a tap of your phone to reveal media and texts, providing insight on MURRMUR and the upcoming iterations.

One of the new programs is between a book and a soft place, a new commission by new media artist and design educator nicole killian. Designed as a playful learning environment, visitors are invited into this play-space to consider various ways for language to be carried out, embodied, and “queered”: we wear the language, we dance the language and we hold it in our hands. An intervention on the ICA’s 2nd floor, between a book and a soft place, can be considered a study on killian’s research questions around queering design education.

MURRMUR also presents SIT(UATION), a mutable seating and display system by artist Riley Hooker in collaboration with architect Nick Meehan. The project grows from a desire to center the body in the act of reading and the structure can be understood as plasmatic—resisting fixed linearity and promoting intellectual promiscuity. The design pulls from 1960s radical architecture, post-modern seating design a-la Peter Opsvik and Terje Ekstrøm, educational methods developed for neurodivergent students, embodiment and mindfulness practices, and anarchic political theories. The research and process behind these programs will be presented in February 2023 and on view from April 21–July 16, 2023.

In September 2022, MURRMUR opened with The Medium is the Massage, a new commission by artist Rafael Domenech. Visitors to The Medium is the Massage can become authors, readers, editors, and publishers when they enter this continuously transforming publication-pavilion. The living space turns the art gallery from a site of passive reception into a site of active production, right up until it closes on July 16, 2023, when the public will be invited to take the project’s remains out of the gallery and into their homes.

TEST PATTERN

Curated by ICA Assistant Curator and Producer David Riley, Test Pattern is a hybrid performance series inspired by the legacy of visionary public-access TV programs and alternative video movements in the US. The series invites artists to turn the ICA auditorium into an experimental production studio for week-long residencies, during which they collaborate with members of the local community to create a live performance and internet broadcast. Launched in March 2022, past Test Pattern performers include DeForrest Brown Jr., madison moore, SHAWNÉ MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY, Moor Mother, jaamil olawale kosoko, Kinlaw and Dorian Wood.

Test Pattern returns to the ICA auditorium on Friday, April 7, with a performance by vocalist, composer, and performance artist Holland Andrews. Their work focuses on the abstraction of operatic and extended-technique voice to build cathartic and dissonant soundscapes. Andrews arranges music for voice, clarinet and electronics and frequently highlights themes surrounding vulnerability and healing. In addition to creating solo work, Andrews develops and performs soundscapes for dance, theater and film. Their work has toured nationally and internationally with artists such as Bill T. Jones, Dorothee Munyaneza, Will Rawls and poet Demian Dinéyazhi.

Will you help support independent, local journalism?

We need your help. RVAHub is a small, independent publication, and we depend on our readers to help us provide a vital community service. If you enjoy our content, would you consider a donation as small as $5? We would be immensely grateful! Interested in advertising your business, organization, or event? Get the details here.

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