# Muscarelle Museum of Art

37°16′05″N 76°42′57″W﻿ / ﻿37.2679526°N 76.7158878°W﻿ / 37.2679526; -76.7158878
The Muscarelle Museum of Art is a university museum affiliated with the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. While the Museum only dates to 1983, the university art collection has been in existence since its first gift – a portrait of the physicist Robert Boyle – in 1732. Most early gifts to William & Mary relate to its history or the history of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Gifts of portraiture were the foundation of the early collection and include many First Families of Virginia (FFV) including sitters from the Page, Bolling and Randolph families.

## History

Throughout the years, gifts of art continued to accumulate including a donation of White Flower by Georgia O'Keeffe given to William & Mary in 1938 by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. This major work in the collection had indiscriminately "decorated" various campus walls, old and new, until it was re-discovered by President Thomas Ashley Graves Jr. in the 1970s. Graves tasked Miles Chappell, from the department of art and art history, to make a college-wide inventory. It was at that time that the immensity and importance of the growing collection was understood and the need for a university museum became apparent.
With the support of numerous alumni, including a major benefactor, Joseph L. Muscarelle (W&M '27) and his wife Margaret, the Carlton Abbott designed Muscarelle Museum of Art opened in 1983 with Glenn D. Lowry as director. In 1987, the second director, Mark Johnson oversaw the expansion of the facility and the first American Alliance of Museums accreditation in 1988. Subsequent accreditations came in 2000 under then-director Bonnie Kelm, and in 2012 under former director Aaron De Groft. David M. Brashear was appointed as interim director in January 2019, and in June 2020 was named as the museum's fifth director.

## Current activities

Today the collection numbers close to 8,000 works. Of particular note are Colonial American and English seventeenth and eighteenth century portraits; a survey collection of original prints and drawings from the fifteenth through the twenty-first centuries including Japanese prints and a major collection of German Expressionist works by Hans Grohs; and the Jean Outland Chrysler collection of American modern works interpreted in oils, drawings, watercolors, and sculpture. Recent acquisitions include European master works by such artists as Luca Giordano and Luca Forte, historic photographic works by Julia Margaret Cameron, Carleton E. Watkins and Edward S. Curtis, as well as contemporary Native American works by Kay WalkingStick, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Emmi Whitehorse, and Cara Romero.
A renovation and expansion of the existing museum concluded in early 2025, creating a state of the art facility as part of the Martha Wren Briggs Center for the Visual Arts at the original Jamestown Road campus location. Designed by world-renowned architects Pelli Clarke & Partners, the expanded Muscarelle Museum of Art includes additional gallery space for both traveling exhibitions and the permanent collection as well as additional space for lectures, events, and programming.

## Selected exhibitions

| Exhibition | Start Date | End Date |
| Michelangelo: The Genesis of the Sistine | March 6, 2025 | May 28, 2025 |
| Shared Ideologies, Selected works by Native American artists from the 1970s to the Present | September 1, 2021 | February 13, 2022 |
| Forever Marked By The Day | September 10, 2021 | January 23, 2022 |
| 1619 / 2019 | November 6, 2019 | January 26, 2020 |
| Women with Vision: Masterworks from the Permanent Collection | February 10, 2018 | May 13, 2018 |
| In the Light of Caravaggio: Dutch and Flemish Paintings from Southeastern Museums | February 10, 2018 | May 13, 2018 |
| Building on the Legacy: African American Art from the Permanent Collection | September 2, 2017 | January 14, 2018 |
| Fred Eversley: 50 Tears an Artist: Light & Space & Energy | September 2, 2017 | December 10, 2017 |
| The Bones of the Earth: Scholars Rocks and the Natural World in Chinese Culture, Selections from the Robert Turvene Collection | April 21, 2017 | August 13, 2017 |
| The Art and Science of Connoisseurship | February 11, 2017 | August 13, 2017 |
| Botticelli and the Search for the Divine: Florentine Painting between the Medici and the Bonfires of the Vanities | February 11, 2017 | April 5, 2017 |
| Building the Brafferton: The Founding, Funding and Legacy of America's Indian School | September 10, 2016 | January 8, 2017 |
| Contemporary American Marine Art: 17th National Exhibition of the American Society of Marine Artists | September 10, 2016 | December 2, 2016 |
| Norman Rockwell and the Boy Scouts | February 6, 2016 | August 21, 2016 |
| Hiroshige's 53 Stations of the Tōkaidō | February 6, 2016 | August 21, 2016 |
| Twilight of a Golden Age: Florentine Painting after the Renaissance, masterworks from the Haukohl Family Collection | April 25, 2015 | January 17, 2016 |
| Leonardo da Vinci and the Idea of Beauty | February 21, 2015 | April 5, 2015 |
| Tree to Mountain: The Woodblock Prints of Tōshi Yoshida | October 17, 2014 | February 8, 2014 |
| 21st Century Diplomacy: Ballet, Ballots and Bullets | May 31, 2014 | September 28, 2014 |
| Caravaggio Connoisseurship: Saint Francis in Meditation and the Capitoline Fortune Teller | February 8, 2014 | April 6, 2014 |
| Glenn Close: A Life in Costume | September 28, 2013 | January 12, 2014 |
| A Brush with Passion: Mattia Preti (1613–1699) | February 9, 2013 | April 14, 2013 |
| Michelangelo: Sacred and Profane, Masterpieces from the Casa Buonarroti | February 9, 2013 | April 14, 2013 |
| African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond from the Smithsonian Art Museum | September 28, 2012 | January 6, 2013 |
| Athenian Potters and Painters: Greek Vases from Virginia Collections | August 18, 2012 | October 7, 2012 |
| Seeing Colors: Secrets of the Impressionists | October 20, 2011 | January 22, 2012 |
| In Memory Still: A Kiowa Legacy in Art | September 10, 2011 | November 13, 2011 |
| Envelopes: Architect's Unfinished Experiments with Building "Skins" | September 17, 2010 | October 24, 2010 |
| Merging Souls: Arts of Devotion in Latin America | April 24, 2010 | July 18, 2010 |
| Unbearable Beauty: Triumph of the Human Spirit, Photographs by W. Eugene Smith and Aileen M. Smith | April 24, 2010 | July 18, 2010 |
| Michelangelo: Anatomy as Architecture, Drawings by the Master | February 6, 2010 | - |
| Deeply Superficial: Andy Warhol's "Voyeurism" | November 7, 2009 | January 17, 2010 |
| Spanish Baroque in the New World: Sibyls from Zurbarán's Studio | August 4, 2009 | November 1, 2009 |
| Tiffany Glass: A Riot of Color ("Art of Glass" ten year anniversary in Conjunction with Chrysler, Contemporary Art Center of VA, and the VA Arts Festival) | April 16, 2009 | July 12, 2009 |
| The Dutch Italianates: Seventeenth-Century Masterpieces from Dulwich Picture Gallery | November 13, 2008 | March 22, 2009 |
| Beyond the Edge of the Sea: Diversity of Life in the Deep-Ocean Wilderness | September 5 | November 2, 2008 |
| Painting the Italian Landscape: Views from the Uffizi | January 25, 2008 | March 23, 2008 |
| Legacy of the Generations: Jacob Lawerence's Legend of John Brown | November 16, 2007 | December 16, 2007 |
| America the Beautiful: The Monumental Landscape of Clyde Butcher | September 6, 2007 | December 16, 2007 |
| Building a College: The Colonial Revival Campus at The College of William & Mary | September 6, 2007 | November 12, 2007 |
| Stars & Stripes: Rare & Historic American Flags from the Collection of Mark and Rosalind Shenkman | June 16, 2007 | July 29, 2007 |
| Visions of the Soul: Works by Hans Friedrich Grohs | May 5, 2007 | July 29, 2007 |
| An American Story: The Wyeth Family Tradition In Art | April 21, 2007 | May 27, 2007 |
| Jaune Quick-To-See Smith: Contemporary Native American Paintings and the Response to Colonization | February 10, 2007 | April 8, 2007 |
| Medici in America, Natura Morta: Still-Life Paintings of the Medici Collections & Caravaggio's Still Life with Fruit on a Stone Ledge | November 11, 2006 | January 7, 2007 |
| The Tsar's Cabinet: Two Hundred Years of Russian Decorative Arts Under the Romanovs | August 26, 2006 | October 8, 2006 |
| Eloquent Vistas: The Art of Nineteenth-Century Landscape Photography from the George Eastman House Collection | November 5, 2005 | January 8, 2006 |
| Charles E. Burchfield: Backyards and Beyond | August 27, 2005 | October 23, 2005 |
| Toulouse-Lautrec: Master of the Moulin Rouge | August 28, 2004 | October 24, 2004 |
| American Studio Glass: A Survey of the Movement | January 24, 2004 | March 21, 2004 |
| Shaped with Passion: The Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Collection of Japanese Ceramics from the 1970s | August 18, 2001 | October 7, 2001 |
| Quilt National 1999: The Best in Contemporary Quilts | May 5, 2001 | July 7, 2001 |
| Georgia O'Keeffe in Williamsburg: A Re-Creation of the Artist's First Public Exhibition in the South | January 27, 2001 | April 27, 2001 |
| Bridges & Boundaries Revisited: African Americans & American Jews | August 26, 2000 | October 29, 2000 |
| Hung Liu: A Ten Year Survey 1988–1998 | August 26, 1998 | October 18, 1998 |
| Ties That Bind: Iban Ikat Fabrics | July 11, 1998 | August 16, 1998 |
| Inuit II: From the Collection of Frederick & Lucy S. Herman; Contemporary American Indian Art: The Joe Fedderson Collection | August 23, 1997 | October 19, 1997 |
| Building Form: Ansel Adams & Architecture | June 14, 1997 | August 17, 1997 |
| Nell Blaine: Retrospective | October 19, 1996 | December 1, 1996 |
| Voyages & Visions: Nineteenth-Century European Images of the Middle East from the Victoria & Albert Museum | January 20, 1996 | March 3, 1996 |
| African-American Works on Paper | October 21, 1995 | December 3, 1995 |
| Before Discovery: Artistic Development in the Americas Before the Arrival of Columbus | May 27, 1995 | August 27, 1995 |
| The Passionate Observer: Photographs by Carl Van Vechten | April 1, 1995 | May 21, 1995 |
| The Reverend James Blair: Preparatory Models & Drawings for the Stature by Lewis Cohen | February 25, 1995 | May 21, 1995 |
| Drawn on the Spot: Perceptions and Views | October 15, 1994 | January 8, 1995 |
| A Golden Age of Painting: Dutch, Flemish & German Paintings of the 16th – 17th Centuries from the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, Houston, Texas; The Fine Art of Drawing: Works on Paper from the Museum and the Herman Foundation Collections | January 23, 1993 | March 21, 1993 |
| Lila Katzen Quincentenary Sculpture Exhibition: Isabel, Columbus & the Statue of Liberty | February 29, 1992 | April 5, 1992 |
| Rodin: Sculpture from the B. Gerald Cantor Collection | February 28, 1991 | April 28, 1991 |
| Portraits & Prospects: British & Irish Drawings & Watercolors from the Collection of the Ulster Museum | January 13, 1990 | March 4, 1990 |
| Photographs by David Hockney | March 18, 1989 | April 30, 1989 |
| Art & the Law | December 21, 1987 | January 17, 1988 |
| Photographs by Yousuf Karsh | July 4, 1987 | September 20, 1987 |
| Modernism in America: 1937–1941 | August 25, 1985 | November 17, 1985 |
| 19th Century German Drawings from the Frederick & Lucy S. Herman Foundation | April 24, 1985 | May 4, 1985 |
| Gene Davis: Child & Man Collaboration | January 11, 1985 | February 25, 1985 |
| Into the Melting Pot: The Immigration of American Modernism (1909–1929) | October 8, 1984 | January 10, 1985 |
| In Search of Light: Spanish Painters from 1850–1950 | May 11, 1984 | July 9, 1984 |
| Late 20th Century Art from the Sydney & Frances Lewis Foundation | February 4, 1984 | April 30, 1984 |
| Form, Function, & Finesse: Drawings from the Frederick & Lucy Herman Foundation | October 21, 1983 | December 21, 1983 |