Art I'm Seeing #51, VHS

Not a video format, but the Virginia Historical Society! While on my recent trip to Richmond and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, I also walked next door to the Virginia Historical Society's museum.
As the banner reads, it's "Free Museum Admission" and there's "Neat Stuff Inside".

This museum is chock-a-block full of stuff. It's a veritable sensory overload that goes from the ice age to pretty much the present.

There are a couple of notable throw backs to idiosyncratic moments in history. An amazing set of murals in gallery 28 to honor the soldiers, and generals of the "War of Northern Aggression" a.k.a. the Civil War felt a little mis-guided, but hey it's history. Gallery 26 is a celebration of guns. Another oddly yesterday sort of thing.

The main galleries ramble and provide you with so much stuff to look at that it almost becomes pointless. to appreciate it, you need to take your time and in doing so you will discover a few real gems. A painting by Thomas Moran depicting run away slaves in the great dismal swamp is one excellent example.

Another is this beautiful Rockwell Kent painting.

And a moment of real irony and mirth for me was a display celebrating the accomplishments of women in Virginia. And since there really aren't any to speak of, some curator with a wry sense of humor placed a photo by the French artist Henri Cartier Bresson depicting a prim and droll group of ladies at a Daughters of the Confederation meeting taken in 1960.

It's really a great space and museum. If the proper goal of any museum is to present information and provoke ideas, this one is very successful.