Current and Upcoming Exhibitions at The Fralin Museum of Art Through July 2022

Open Window: Emilio Sanchez on Paper 

Through June 20, 2022
In summer 2021, the United States Postal Service celebrated the artist Emilio Sanchez (1921-1999) by issuing a new series of stamps featuring four of his architectural artworks. Sanchez is the first Cuban-American artist to be honored in this way. During a career spanning more than 50 years, Sanchez investigated the effects of light and shadow on architecture and landscapes across the globe, particularly in the Caribbean, Latin America, and North America. 

Although born in Cuba, Sanchez spent most of his life in the United States. Part of a prominent and wealthy Cuban family, Sanchez attended various U.S. boarding schools from a young age. He then spent two years at the University of Virginia before enrolling at the Art Students League of New York in 1944. For the rest of his life, Sanchez made New York City his home while continuing to travel worldwide. Sanchez’s depictions of place were informed by his multifaceted identities as a gay Cuban man in New York, as well as his fascination with buildings and their architectural details. He delighted in the natural patterns and shadows cast by bright sunlight on facades, doors, windows, and shutters, making artworks often described as dreamlike. 

Curated by Laura Minton, curator of exhibitions. This exhibition is made possible through support from The Fralin Museum of Art volunteer board. The Fralin Museum of Art’s programming is made possible through generous support from The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation. In-kind donors are: WTJU 91.1 FM and Ivy Publications LLC’s Charlottesville Welcome Book.

Nostalgia U.S.A.

Reopens: Feb. 6-March 20, 2022
Nostalgia is an intense longing for the familiar, for home, for things or places of the past. However, it is also an act; to be nostalgic for something is to create a story or construct a myth. Nostalgia is a lens that clouds the past and can be felt by an individual, a community, or an entire nation. This exhibition brings together a selection of photographs from The Fralin’s collection that interrogates nostalgia in the United States through an exploration of imagination, identity, and mythmaking.

Although photographs are often believed to be neutral objects of documentation, it is important to remember that each image is a product of aesthetic and formal decisions made by an artist. All of the photographers featured in this exhibition are white American men and their privileged social positions have profoundly influenced their artwork.

While the artworks in this exhibition all explore American culture, they also touch upon universal human realities such as childhood and place. Each viewer brings their own valuable knowledge and experiences to this exhibition. When looking at these photographs, the audience is encour­aged to consider their own reactions, feelings, and interpretations. As 21st-century viewers examining photographs taken 30 or more years ago, we must also question our own nostalgia.

This exhibition was curated by students from the 2019-2020 University Museums internship class: Caleb Briggs, Sylvia Dahlhauser, Margaret Dunbar, Yasmine Figueroa-Hudson, Blake Hesson, Megan Maxson, Addie Patrick, Josie Sydnor, and Vibha Vijay under the direction of M. Jordan Love, the Carol R. Angle academic curator.

The Fralin Museum of Art’s programming is made possible through generous support from The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation. This exhibition is made possible through the generous support of Arts$. In-kind donors are: WTJU 91.1 FM and Ivy Publications LLC’s Charlottesville Welcome Book.

Structures

Through June 1, 2022
This dynamic selection of 20th- and 21st-century artworks from the Museum’s permanent collection explores the ways art can speak to or question the formal, physical, environmental, social and institutional structures of our world. Encounter the work of Robert Reed, whose abstract paintings and collages contain coded references to his life and memories. The depopulated architectural paintings of Emilio Sanchez invite us to contemplate our built environment. DJ and visual artist Rozeal addresses racism and the complexities of cultural appropriation and globalization in our current times. Alberto Rey encourages viewers to consider their own ecological surroundings from which we are often disconnected. These connections to regional resources and materials are also seen in the work of Maria and Julian Martinez, who innovated upon ancient forms of pottery in ways that still inspire Pueblo artists. Oftentimes, multiple structures are present in the same artwork, providing pathways and opportunities for interpretation and inquiry. From paintings to collages, from pottery to jewelry, the artworks in this exhibition inspire conversations about how our world is structured.

This exhibition is curated by Laura Minton, curator of exhibitions; Adriana Greci Green, curator of indigenous arts of the Americas; Emily Lazaro, docent coordinator; and Rebekah Boggs, former tour coordinator, and education assistant.

This exhibition is made possible through support from The Fralin Museum of Art Volunteer Board. The Fralin Museum of Art’s programming is made possible through generous support from The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation. In-kind donors are: WTJU 91.1 FM and Ivy Publications LLC’s Charlottesville Welcome Book.

Alternative Futures

Feb. 6-July 24, 2022
Alternative Futures will present a series of video works by contemporary artists: Alicia Grullon, she/her; Cauleen Smith, she/her; Cassils, they/them, in collaboration with Fanaa, she/her, Keijaun Thomas, she/her, and Rafael Esparza, he/him; and Macon Reed, they/she. Employing literal plans for equity, as well as more abstracted approaches, the works presented in this series will highlight the myriad ways artists visualize a more equitable world through explorations of the divine, the possibilities of imagination, and the power of the collective. By amplifying voices that continue to face marginalization and violence at the hands of white supremacy and the legacy of colonialism, Alternative Futures asks us to recognize and revere historically and presently excluded folks and prompts us to envision radically new futures.

Curated by Hannah Cattarin, they/she, Assistant Curator. This exhibition is made possible through support from The Fralin Museum of Art Volunteer Board. The Fralin Museum of Art’s programming is made possible through generous support from The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation. In-kind donors are: WTJU 91.1 FM and Ivy Publications LLC’s Charlottesville Welcome Book.

Schedule:

• Feb. 6-March 20: Breaking News (2019), single-channel video by Alicia Grullon, she/her.
• March 22-May 1: Sojourner (2018), digital video, color, and sound by Cauleen Smith, she/her.
• May 4-June 19: Solution (2018), four-channel video installation by Cassils, they/them, with Fanaa, she/her, Keijaun Thomas, she/her and Rafael Esparza, he/him.
• June 21-July 25: All the World Must Suffer a Big Jolt (2016), HD video by Macon Reed, they/she.

Beyond Pictorialism: Early 20th-Century Photography and the Fine Arts

Feb. 6-July 24, 2022
At the start of the 20th century, photography served as a scientific and documentary tool and an aid to the fine arts but had yet to achieve status as an artistic medium. The Photo-Secession, a group of American photographers established in 1902, worked against the medium’s identity as a technology of precision and mass production to promote photography as a fine art. In their quarterly journal, Camera Work, they emphasized the photographer’s subjective vision and manipulation of the photographic print and claimed photography to be “a means of individual expression” or “pictorial expression.” 

Pictorial photography comprised a variety of styles and photographic techniques which often referenced other artistic media, such as painting, drawing, printmaking, architecture, and sculpture. Rather than showing photography’s dependence on the other arts, photographers created new ways of seeing traditional media and demonstrated its ability to extend beyond the visual arts. Though the growing Pictorialist movement ultimately produced diverging definitions of art photography, the medium remained essential in transforming artistic conventions and subject matter over the course of the 20th century.

Curated by Chloe Downe Wells, 2020-2021 Barringer-Lindner Fellow. This exhibition is made possible through support from The Fralin Museum of Art volunteer board. The Fralin Museum of Art’s programming is made possible through generous support from The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation. In-kind donors are: WTJU 91.1 FM and Ivy Publications LLC’s Charlottesville Welcome Book.

Gandharan Sculpture from the Alan D. and Ann K. Wolfe Collection

Feb. 6-July 24, 2022
The ancient region of Gandhara was situated in what is today northwest Pakistan and neighboring regions of Afghanistan. A spur of the great Silk Road—the network of trade and pilgrimage routes that stretched from northeast Asia to the Mediterranean Sea—passed through the region and was a source of considerable wealth. Many temples and monasteries dotted the land, and the cultural influence of Gandhara was felt far beyond its boundaries. As the westernmost part of the Indian subcontinent, the area was historically a meeting place of eastern and western cultures. Though it was always considered a part of ancient India, in the 6th century BCE it was, for a time, part of the Persian Empire, and in the 4th century BCE, it was conquered by Alexander the Great’s forces.

Though the Buddha never visited Gandhara, it became a second holy land of Buddhism. A distinctive sculptural style emerged in the region and flourished from the first to the fifth centuries CE, first mostly done in stone and later largely in stucco. The sculpture of Gandhara combines Hellenistic and provincial Roman influences on local idioms with Indian subjects (mostly Buddhist) and motifs. The sculptures were richly painted and gilded in antiquity, but only faint traces of this survive today.

Curated by Daniel Ehnbom, associate professor emeritus, UVA Department of Art. This exhibition is made possible through support from The Fralin Museum of Art volunteer board. The Fralin Museum of Art’s programming is made possible through generous support from The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation. In-kind donors are: WTJU 91.1 FM and Ivy Publications LLC’s Charlottesville Welcome Book.

Focus On: Laura Aguilar

Feb. 6-June 19, 2022
After years of photographing her Los Angeles community, contemporary artist Laura Aguilar (1959-2018), she/her, turned the camera on herself. Initially inspired by and made as a tribute to her friend and mentor, artist Judy Dater, Aguilar created a prolific number of nude self-portraits set in nature. Aguilar’s introduction of her body into the landscapes of Southern California and Texas forces us, as writer and author Macarena Gómez-Barris notes, “to consider the specific histories of violence of American colonization, often captured by the technologies of modernity that took static images of captive indigenous peoples.”

The four works displayed—from Aguilar’s Stillness and Motion series—were recently acquired for the museum’s permanent collection. The images from Stillness illustrate Aguilar’s self-portraiture while Motion demonstrates her collaboration with other individuals. Both series create powerful visual metaphors connecting her queer, Chicana, fat body to the land she occupies and directly challenge expectations of the nude femme figure in nature established by normative art history. Aguilar’s images visualize myriad modes of identification and enhance visibility for often excluded and disempowered bodies—challenging and subverting thin, white, heterosexual, able-bodied ideals.

Curated by Hannah Cattarin, they/she, assistant curator. This exhibition is made possible through support from The Fralin Museum of Art Volunteer Board. The Fralin Museum of Art’s programming is made possible through generous support from The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation. In-kind donors are: WTJU 91.1 FM and Ivy Publications LLC’s Charlottesville Welcome Book.

About The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia
Established in 1935, the University of Virginia Art Museum became The Fralin Museum of Art in 2012 in honor of a bequest of American art and service to the university by Cynthia and W. Heywood Fralin. The Museum maintains a collection of more than 13,000 works of art, including American and European painting, works on paper and sculpture from the 15th through the 20th centuries; art from the ancient Mediterranean; Asian art; and Native and ancient American art. Housed in the historic Bayly Building near the Rotunda on the landmark UVA campus, the Fralin is dedicated to serving the widest possible audiences and engaging comprehensive visual education to enhance its visitors’ understanding of world cultures. Throughout the year, the Museum presents a diverse selection of exhibitions, programs, research, and events that bring the university and broader community together.

Media Contact:
Sara Stacy, MPA
sara@bluewatercommunications.biz
800-975-3212

Image Credits: 

Image for Alternative Futures:
Alicia Grullon. Still from Breaking News, 2019. Single-channel video, 4:13 minutes. Courtesy of artist.

Image for Beyond Pictorialism: Early 20th-Century Photography and the Fine Arts: 
Edward Steichen 
American, 1879–1973
M. Auguste Rodin, 1911
Photogravure from original negative
Gift of Henry Javor
1985.18.9

Image for Gandharan Sculpture from the Alan D. and Ann K. Wolfe Collection:
Gandharan Artist
Standing Buddha, 3rd century CE
Schist
Gift of Ann K. Wolfe, from the Collection of Alan D. and Ann K. Wolfe
2017.9