Photo by Ash Daniel
Elaine and Baxter Perkinson Jr. at a dinner auction hosted by Chesterfield Cultural Arts Foundation (Photo by Ash Daniel)
Finding funding for a fine arts center in Chesterfield County took years of work and was like pulling teeth, so of course it took a real dentist to ease the process and help put the project over the top.
The dentist is Dr. Baxter Perkinson Jr., whose $1 million pledge to the project is helping to make the arts center a reality in Chester on the Village Green.
The Baxter Perkinson Center for the Arts, named in honor of the dentist and his late father, broke ground in November and is set to open in December 2017. It’s an $8.1 million facility, paid for through $6.9 million in bonds and through donations from Perkinson and other patrons. Perkinson and his wife, Elaine, were honored in November at a dinner and auction that also served as a fundraiser for the arts center.
“Needless to say, that was the highlight of our two-year journey,” says Hugh Cline, the project’s chairman. “He and his wife are very wonderful, very philanthropic people that really believe in the community.”
Perkinson says that his father, W. Baxter Perkinson Sr., was a pillar in his community, living and working as a business owner in the Chesterfield area for years, but also volunteering his time as a church deacon and president of a local historical society. He explained that once he heard that the arts center was in Chesterfield and it needed help, it was a natural fit.
“My father died about five years ago, and I’d been looking for a way to honor him that ... would be meaningful,” said Perkinson. “I’d given money before to the dental school at VCU and [Trinity Episcopal School] here in Richmond, so I have given contributions like that before, but generally I had a lot of time to think about it, and I’ve been active in the organization and it just evolved. This came on as a surprise, and within 24 hours, I said yes, and we did it.”
Perkinson is a founder of Virginia Family Dentistry. His interest in art began when he was 35 years old, after a watercolor painting class he took with his wife. Perkinson says that art has been his creative outlet ever since, and a source for quiet relaxation.
“My job as a dentist, I’m talking to people all day. Part of my job is talking to people, but the nice thing about being an artist is you can be alone, and if you want to listen to music or watch television, you just feel like you’re not being pressured,” says Perkinson. “If you asked me which one I like the best, I really couldn’t say. But at 71, I’m still working, and I’m still painting, so I don’t know which one I’ll give up first.”
A watercolor rendering of the Baxter Perkinson Center for the Arts (Artwork by Baxter Parkinson Jr.)
Rendering of a gallery space (Courtesy Chesterfield Center for the Arts Foundation)
The Perkinson Center for the Arts will not only serve as an art space, but also as a gathering place for the community. In addition to the 1,000-square-foot art gallery, the center will include meeting rooms and ballrooms that can be used for wedding receptions and visual and performance arts classrooms, and its 350-seat main theater will have a fully equipped orchestra pit. The arts center will also seek to collaborate with other art spaces around the Richmond area and begin to build a coalition of galleries around the city.
Rendering courtesy Chesterfield Center for the Arts Foundation
“To my mind, this is the first ground-up public art facility to be built in the Richmond area,” says Cline. “In this case, we should be able to build this in exactly the right way to meet our needs.”
Amanda King, vice-chair woman of the Chesterfield Cultural Arts Foundation, described her “elation” after hearing the news of Dr. Perkinson’s donation.
“We’ve worked so hard trying to make this arts center a reality,” says King. “His donation was the final stamp of approval to get this center to happen.”
Conversations about opening an arts center in Chesterfield have been going on since the 1990s, according to Cline. The arts foundation will be responsible for operation of the center.
“We just want to help the quality of life within the region, and the arts is one of the things in this region that has not been met,” says Cline. “If you don’t know about it, you don’t necessarily miss it, but I really do think that it’s something valuable.”
To date, the project has raised $2.5 million in donations, and the foundation has a goal of raising an additional $500,000. You can learn more about the project at its website, artschesterfieldva.org.
“I think that an art facility like this one, once people get acclimated to it, [they] will see the benefit of it,” says Cline. “I think that the impact that it’s going to have, [ is ] going to surprise a lot of people.”
