Lynchburg Fine Art...
More to these Museums Than Meets the Eye!

Lynchburg fine art galleries are waiting for you. Anyone who takes the time spend some quality time getting to know the premier art galleries in Lynchburg will be richly rewarded. Beside viewing some great works of art, there is some remarkable history to relive. Let's visit the little known Daura Gallery first.

From 1945 to 1946, Pedro Francisco Daura y Garcia was chairman of the Art Department at Lynchburg College and taught at Randolph-Macon Woman's College from 1946 to 1953. Yawn, so what you ask?

The "so what" is how Pedro Daura, born on the island of Minorca in 1896, moved to Barcelona and became Pierre Daura and had a godfather named Pablo Casals.

Then studied art under Picasso's father and established an art studio.

Duty called and he served three years in the Spanish army.

After surviving the military, he became a distinguished, recognized artist in Paris and married Louis Blair from Richmond, Virginia in 1928.

Once again duty called and he joined the Spanish Republican Army to fight against Franco after which he settled in Virginia, and became a U.S. citizen.

Wow, and all this before becoming Chairman of the Art Department at Lynchburg College; a remarkable sequence of events which gave the world of Lynchburg fine art a tremendous boost.

Pierre's life is memorialized in the Daura Gallery in the Dillard Arts Center at Lynchburg College. This Lynchburg fine art collection includes paintings, drawings, prints, and sculpture by Pierre Daura and many other American and European artists.

There are numerous permanent exhibits and well as exhibits that it makes available as "traveling exhibits" on loan.

Admission is free, and the Gallery is fully accessible to disabled visitors. The gallery has an excellent website that has an intensely interesting account of Pierre Daura's life and current happenings at the gallery. There is also a convenient link to the Dillard Fine Arts Center.

Leaving the Daura Gallery, the next stop on the tour is the Maier Museum of Art just a short drive from Lynchburg College. It is the cornerstone of Lynchburg fine art.

Both Randolph College and it's world famous art collection have had some gut wrenching experiences of late.

The college is a private liberal arts college that was founded in 1891 as Randolph-Macon Woman's College. On July 1, 2007, horror of horrors, it went coeducational and assumed the name "Randolph College".

For Lynchburg, this was no small issue. It triggered protests, marches and all kinds of anguish from the ladies forming the alumi of the former women's college. Nevertheless, financial pressures prevailed and the urinals were installed.

The second gut wrenching event occurred in the same year when the board of trustees voted to auction off four paintings from the museum's prized collection. Again it was financial pressures that drove the decision but in spite of high level resignations, numerous outraged editorials in the newspaper, and threatened lawsuits, the auction went forward.

It appears that time can heal all wounds since today little is heard about either the integration of males into the student body or the disappearance of the four paintings from the 3500 piece collection. From the outside, looking in, all seems calm at Randolph College and the Maier Museum of Art.

The museum is still nationally recognized and continues to feature works by outstanding American artists of the 19th and 20th centuries. The collection whose assemblage began in 1920, now holds a collection of several thousand paintings, prints, drawings, and photographs in the Maier's permanent collection.

There is a year-round schedule of special exhibitions and educational programs. In addition to the exhibits, a wide and rich variety of internships, museum studies, class visits, and other learning experiences are offered by the museum to both students and the local community.

A richly populated website shows many of the current painting in the collection, carries schedules of events and provides many useful links to other art related topics of interest.

Now that our feet are sore from viewing Lynchburg fine art, let's turn to a more sedentary activity. Let's go to the theatre. Click the link for the performing arts of Lynchburg.

Custom Search