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An image of a museum display case with 4 pieces of ceramic teaware, all white and accented with either gold or navy blue.
Art History

The Fralin Explores Tea Making as a Form of Global Connection with Teaware Exhibition

Drinking tea is one of the most common practices in the world, with Americans alone consuming 3.9 billion gallons in 2021. With instant tea bags and cafe matcha lattes becoming more prevalent around the world, it can be easy to forget the cultural significance that tea drinking has in the ease and convenience that these products provide. The Fralin Museum of Art’s latest exhibition, entitled “Crafted for Tea: Connecting Cultures with Teaware and Traditions,” highlights the skill, artistry and history behind the making of this common drink.

https://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2026/03/the-fralin-explores-tea-making-as-a-form-of-global-connection-with-teaware-exhibition?ct=content_open&cv=cbox_featured

A muted background of a drawn beach scene. In front, 6 mannequins showcase different styles and colors of vintage beach swimwear from years past.
Art History

As Students Head to Spring Break, Beach Attire Has Dramatically Changed

This week, thousands of American college students will descend upon beaches across the country, donning swim trunks and bikinis for what has become an annual tradition: spring break. It’s no surprise that today’s swimwear is a far cry from styles of decades past, even if tankinis are making a comeback. UVA Today went to the University of Virginia’s Historic Clothing Collection to explore a century of swim fashion with the collection’s manager, Marcy Linton.

https://news.virginia.edu/content/students-head-spring-break-beach-attire-has-dramatically-changed

Photo of Jacquelyn Kim, brown hair with bangs and wearing a black top, stands in front of green foliage.
Art History

Staff Spotlight: Jacquelyn Kim Shares the ‘Magic’ of Special Collections Library

Jacquelyn Kim first joined the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library in 2022 as a student worker, where she helped build an exhibition that examined the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. The exhibition was curated by UVA alumni and community members and gave Kim a crash course in what she calls “the importance of co-creation.”

https://library.virginia.edu/news/2025/staff-spotlight-jacquelyn-kim-shares-magic-special-collections-library?mtm_campaign=em&mtm_kwd=sub

A gallery with dark blue walls and brown checkered floors displays various artifacts on the walls and in glass display cases around the perimeter of the room. The lighting is low and moody.
Art History

Fralin Exhibit Explores Cultural Interactions That Shaped Ancient Egypt and Nubia

The Fralin Museum of Art is currently hosting “The World Between: Egypt and Nubia in Africa,” an exhibit which explores the juxtaposition of having sharp political boundaries, yet blurred cultural ones. The exhibit showcases this complex relationship through a variety of artifacts, such as pottery, statues and figurines, as well as 3D-printed replicas of certain statues that guests are allowed to touch. Anastasia Dakouri-Hild, curator of the exhibit and professor of art history, said she put the collection together to demonstrate the influence Nubia had on Egypt and educate visitors on how ancient people led normal lives.

https://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2025/11/fralin-exhibit-explores-cultural-interactions-that-shaped-ancient-egypt-and-nubia?ct=content_open&cv=cbox_featured

A hot pink background with the phrase "Living Art" and "The Fralin" in bold letters with gold and navy blue accents.
Art History

Arts This Week: The Fralin Museum of Art’s 90th Anniversary Soiree

You’re listening to WTJU Charlottesville.The Fralin Museum of Art is celebrating its 90th anniversary with a soiree on November 7, from 6 to 11pm, featuring great food, performance, music and interactive activities. For Arts This Week, we spoke with Director of the Fralin, Karen Milbourne, to learn more about the event.

https://www.wtju.net/arts-this-week-the-fralin-museum-of-arts-90th-anniversary-soiree/

A glass cabinet with various books and papers and posters displayed inside.
Art History

VQR at 100: New Exhibition Explores Acclaimed Magazine’s Archives

In 2024, Julia Mathas, then an Editorial Assistant at the Virginia Quarterly Review (VQR), was conducting research on the literary magazine’s history in anticipation of its centennial anniversary the following year. While looking for a file on Ezra Pound in the correspondence archives of VQR’s longest-serving editor, Charlotte Kohler, Mathas stumbled upon a folder labelled “Sylvia Plath.” Within it she found a signed 1958 letter from Plath asking the editors to consider three of her poems for publication.

https://library.virginia.edu/news/2025/vqr-100-new-exhibition-explores-acclaimed-magazines-archives?mtm_campaign=em&mtm_kwd=sub

A group of around 15 people stand in a semi-circle in front of a display of wall art.
Art History

Learn the “ABCs of the UVA Library” Through Its New Exhibition

“The ABCs of the UVA Library” was also conceived as a way to give Leo S. Lo, the new Dean of Libraries and University Librarian, an overview of the Library’s collections. Lo’s tenure began two days before the exhibition opened. “What an extraordinary welcome gift!” Lo said. “I am deeply impressed by the scope of our collections and, even more, by the creativity and collaboration. The concept is playful and imaginative, the execution is stunning. I am telling everyone about it.”

https://library.virginia.edu/news/2025/learn-abcs-uva-library-through-its-new-exhibition?mtm_campaign=em&mtm_kwd=sub

A hallway with checkered floors has informative colors panels on both sides of the hallway walls, blue and red colored. This is a picture of the exhibit.
Art History

‘The Surprising Story of Furcy Madeleine’: New Exhibition in Shannon Library Explores the Contradictions of Slavery and Freedom During the Age of Revolution

n 1990, American historian Sue Peabody was researching her dissertation on enslaved peoples’ pre-revolutionary freedom lawsuits in France when she came upon an intriguing story. In 1817 on Île Bourbon (now Réunion), a French-colonized island in the Indian Ocean, a 31-year-old enslaved man named Furcy Madeleine brought legal proceedings before the Saint-Denis District Court against his master Joseph Lory. Furcy’s suit contested his status as a slave and claimed his “ingenuity” — his freedom of birth.

https://library.virginia.edu/news/2025/surprising-story-furcy-madeleine-new-exhibition-shannon-library-explores-contradictions?mtm_campaign=em&mtm_kwd=sub

A close-up photo of a hand using a small paintbrush to paint a dotted design on a paper, using red, white, blue, and black.
Art History

In the Beginning: Paintings by Senior Artists of the Spinifex Arts Project

In the Beginning: Paintings by Senior Artists of the Spinifex Arts Project presents the work of internationally renowned artists from the Spinifex Arts Project, a collective of Pitjantjatjara men and women in Tjuntjuntjara, 800 miles east of Perth in the Great Victoria Desert, Western Australia. Spinifex Arts Project began in 1997 when the artists realized that painting would be an instrumental tool in lobbying the Western Australian government to recognize their ongoing connection to their sacred Country so they could return to their homelands.

https://kluge-ruhe.org/all-exhibitions/in-the-beginning-paintings-by-senior-artists-of-the-spinifex-arts-project/

Orange letters with the title of the exhibition are in the center of the image, and the border is filled with small pictures of the individual artists.
Art History

"Fuego Eterno: Soberanías Visuales" Opens August 29th

Ayuujk (Mixe), Nahua, Maya-Ch’ol, Ñuu Savi (Mixtec), Otomí, Maya-Kaqchikel, P’urhépecha, Diidxazà, Maya-Tsotsil, Zapotec, and Sarhua are but a few of the ancestral lineages that collide in Fuego Eterno: Soberanías Visuales. This project brings together the knowledge and aesthetic achievements of individuals Whose ancestral lineage predates Spanish colonialism and who center millennia of inherited epistemologies within their contemporary practices.

https://www.curatorlove.com/uvafesv

A photo of five African American women stand together, holding various instruments and feather decorations.
Art History

Black Appalachian Storytellers Fellowship

Mid Atlantic Arts partners with the National Association of Black Storytellers (NABS) and South Arts on the Black Appalachian Storytellers Fellowships. This program honors and promotes the understanding of Black Appalachian storytelling traditions that embody the history, heritage, and culture of African Americans in the region. The National Association of Black Storytellers awards one Fellowship per year in each of the six eligible states: Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.

https://www.midatlanticarts.org/opportunity/black-appalachian-storytellers-fellowship/

A painting with a beige background, with black, red, and mustard colored brush strokes haphazardly painted across the canvas.
Art History

The Fralin Marks Joan Mitchell’s Centennial With a Restoration

In “Joan Mitchell: Uncovering 100 Years” at The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia, there’s a 1960 photo of the painter emphatically gesturing while standing in front of a large-scale canvas by Adolph Gottlieb. Mitchell seems comfortable in conversation with her art-world friends, hinting at the relationship she had with mid-20th-century galleries and their denizens.

https://c-ville.com/the-fralin-marks-joan-mitchells-centennial-with-a-restoration/