Photo by Megan Irwin
The Museum Art Galleries at Virginia Union University, housed in the L. Douglas Wilder Library, are a little-known Richmond treasure. The collections include rare artifacts from New Guinea, masks and sculptures from West and Central Africa, Coptic crosses from Ethiopia and an array of African-American folk art.
Barbara Grey, the gallery coordinator, says she is the one who “started this whole thing.” After she retired from Richmond Public Schools, she studied art, and it took her six years to organize the records from the donations. The VUU galleries would not have been possible without the contributions of James and Barbara Sellman, whose donations since 1988 have exceeded 300 works of art. As VUU Interim President Joseph Johnson notes, “Our museum art gallery contributes greatly to the university’s student success, academic excellence, community support and institutional prominence.”
The highlight of the galleries is the work of self-taught African-American artist Thornton Dial Sr. His paintings and drawings at VUU make up one of the most extensive collections of his art at a private university in the United States. The Dial exhibition is on permanent display at the Museum galleries.
Dial was born in 1928 to a teenage mother in rural Alabama, and from an early age, he painted, sculpted and drew from his life experiences. His works comment on political and social issues, particularly as they pertain to the African-American experience, including the Great Migration, sharecropping in the Black Belt and the turbulence of the civil rights movement. Dial died in early 2016.
Both artist and historian, Dial depicted the struggles of the past through images — his way of separating himself from history. His words, printed on a handout at the museum, explain, “My art is the evidence of my freedom.” Examples of this freedom are evident in his paintings “Boycotting,” “We Depend on Our Roots” and “Tiger,” whose ropelike images suggest both the bondage of slavery and the violence of lynching.
The other primary subject of Dial’s work is women. Central to the exhibition is his 60-by-90-inch painting “Lady Caught Between the Fishes and the Tiger Looking in,” a composition of deep oranges and blues whose brushstrokes suggest movement, and “A Woman Holds Up the Man,” one of his many works that reflect the artist’s upbringing by women.
“I’m trying to get the catalogue finished, with a deadline of September,” says Grey, who’s been organizing the various collections' information for the past two years. There are many more items that could be exhibited — if there was only more space. And the donations keep rolling in: gifts from Zaire, including several ornately carved chiefs' chairs, shields and wooden musical instruments from the Ivory Coast, Ghana and Mali, were just donated by Thomas Brumfield.
Plans are in place to move the galleries to a larger building on campus, the Industrial Hall, but the interior requires major restoration and renovation first. The historic 1899 building will be converted into a three-floor haven for the collections with double the display space, from 3,200 to 7,424 square feet, and will include three galleries, a lecture hall and an artist studio. As Johnson notes, “The Industrial Hall provides an opportunity to restore and renovate this facility with adequate storage and open floor plan for exhibits within the next two to three years, with proper funding and contributions.”
The Virginia Union University Museum Art Galleries are open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Saturdays by appointment only. Admission is free, though donations are welcome. 804-257-5660 or vuu.edu/about-vuu/vuu-museum-art-galleries.
