Beaux Arts Ball

From 1931 to 1933, an elaborate costume gala called the Beaux Arts Ball was held at the Jefferson Hotel to raise awareness and funds for the Richmond Academy of Arts.

This was amid the Great Depression and Prohibition, but Richmonders partied hearty anyway. There really hasn't been anything quite like it since in terms of scale and participation.

Artist and educator Adele Clark and her partner Nora Houston shared a vision for a community-based cultural center to bring national attention to Richmond.

By 1930, Clark was on Academy's board, while men like diplomat Alexander Weddell, whose prestige and connections were needed, sat as president.

The party at the Jefferson recognized winners of the citywide Tournament of Arts and Crafts that celebrated creative endeavor. Exhibitions took place in public spaces throughout Richmond, including department stores, the Valentine Museum and the Anderson Gallery.

Clark came to the first Ball as Sappho with Houston as the late-18th-century French artist Mme. Vigée Le Brun.

The tournament didn't occur in 1933, though costume-ball winners received original art. The envisioned Richmond Academy of Arts didn't materialize. Instead, the state with federal Depression-relief funds built the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Theresa Pollak, a Clark protégé, founded what became the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts, where she taught 41 years. In 1963, the then-Hand Workshop (now Visual Arts Center of Richmond) started its Craft & Design Show.

1) "The Spirit of the Ball"

Harriet (or Harriette) Caperton entered the Jefferson Hotel lobby at midnight on April 21, 1931, during festivities at the first Beaux Arts Ball. As "The Spirit of the Ball," she dismounted the horse to lead "the long and vivid costume parade," as the Richmond Times-Dispatch called it.

The series of galas, from 1931 to 1933, was organized by the Richmond Academy of Arts to culminate a citywide Tournament of Arts and Crafts. The academy grew out of an effort by arts advocate Adele Clark and others to establish a public cultural institute.

The tournament represented all creative endeavors, from playwriting to welding, from batik to oil painting. Exhibitions were held in downtown department stores Miller & Rhoads and Thalhimers, the Valentine Museum, and the A.A. Anderson Gallery of the Richmond Division of the College of William & Mary (now the VCUArts Anderson Gallery).

The formal presentations for Tournament winners began at 8 p.m., the party started at 10 p.m. and tickets were $5 per couple.

2) Graces of the Arts

The dating of this image isn't clear, but newspaper accounts suggest the 1931 "Graces" procession of the creative arts, with each young woman representing tragedy, comedy, history, poetry,and so forth. They could be members of a troupe directed by renowned Richmond dance instructor Elinor Fry. The location is the Jefferson Hotel's grand staircase.

3) Invitation to a Dance

The elegant handwritten invitations for the 1932 gala harkened to the 1786 to 1788 effort by Frenchman Chevalier Quesnay de Beaurepaire, a participant in the American Revolution, to establish a national arts and culture center in Richmond. Thus, the major contributors donned 18th-century personae for the Beaux Arts Ball.

Pictured (left to right) are Titanic survivor, banker and state legislator Robert W. Daniel (Louis XVI); his wife, Charlotte (Marie Antoinette); and Virginia (Martha Washington) and Alexander Weddell (George Washington). The Weddells established their estate Virginia House, a transported English building, in Windsor Farms

The characters portrayed at far right aren't mentioned in contemporary accounts. They are playwright Louise Burleigh Powell alongside her husband, composer and concert pianist John Powell. Powell was an ethnomusicologist but also an avowed racialist who campaigned for racial purity by preventing the intermarriage of African-Americans and whites.

At the same time of the '32 event, Richmond hosted a mass convention of national music clubs and state music educators at the Hotel John Marshall. There, James Francis Cooke, editor of The Etude, a national music magazine, proclaimed, "When the Lord makes a genius, he breaks the mold. There will never be another John Powell!"

4) "Unusual and Mysterious"

First page of the program for the Second Beaux Arts Ball, held on April 27, 1932. The "Spirit of the Ball" was Elinor Fry, who descended from the Jefferson's lobby ceiling in a huge stylized tulip.

5) The Gypsy Queen

Artist and educator Theresa Pollak was tasked in 1928 by Henry H. Hibbs Jr. to create an arts component for the School of Social Work and Public Health, later to become the Richmond division of the College of William & Mary, then the Richmond Professional Institute and finally Virginia Commonwealth University. Pollak taught there for 41 years.

Here, the young Pollak is shown in costume for the '32 Beaux Arts Ball, as she was also building a career in the New York City arts world.

6) Let's Get This Party Started

This view of the Jefferson Hotel lobby shows the Second Beaux Arts Ball in full progress. The mezzanine was divided into 15 decorated box sections for contributors and social luminaries.

Streamers and other debris on the floor suggest it is just after the costume parade, and the participants mill around awaiting the judges' decisions. One newspaper account estimated that some 10,000 people came through during the course of the evening, from 8 p.m. to dawn.

The event's attendance was boosted by a conference of U.S. governors and a convention of national and state musicians and teachers a few blocks away at the Hotel John Marshall. Even New York Gov. Franklin Delano Roosevelt made an appearance at the gala.

7) Revelers

The Beaux Arts Ball, April 27, 1932, at the Jefferson Hotel. Two jazz bands played the whole night, interspersed by novelty performances.

8) Party On

The dancing and "novelty" performances for 1932's Beaux Arts Ball, as the program described, went from midnight to 4 a.m. Drinking was forbidden by law, but smoking indoors was allowed.

9) The Gang's All Here

Costumed 1932 Beaux Arts Ball celebrants on the Jefferson Hotel's grand staircase. Newspapers, posters and party remnants on the floor suggest that this is toward the evening's end, near dawn.

10) Lorenzo's Daughter and Date

Artist and future cultural force Sara D. November, dressed as Natalina de Medici, and Harold Whippo as Machiavelli pose on the Jefferson Hotel's grand stairs in advance of the third and last Beaux Arts Ball in 1933.

11) Dress Rehearsal

The April 20, 1933, Beaux Arts Ball wasn't a celebration for artistic achievement. The Tournament of Arts and Crafts was abandoned as emphasis shifted from the more community-centered Richmond Academy of Arts toward a state-supported arts museum.

The theme was "The Masque of Lorenzo de Medici," and the event featured prominent Richmonders acting as courtiers during the reign of Lorenzo "The Magnificent" of Florence. Lorenzo was portrayed as falling into a dream after drinking too much at his party. A Hooded Figure visited him and diced with him for his earthly possessions.

The gala was an ambitious and more structured dramatic event. Julian Fowlkes, who according to newspaper accounts worked in New York and Hollywood, directed the Masque.

Winners of the costume competition won original art by Theresa Pollak, W. Cole Gray and Alexander von Jost.

Italian Ambassador Augusto Rosso and members of his consulate attended. Per protocol, "Giovenzza," the Italian Fascist national song, was performed along with "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Pictured here are De Witt Hankins, in profile, as Lorenzo next to Virginia Reynolds as Lucrezia, The serving men are John Dietrich (left) and Tate Irvine Jr. At right, J. Stuart Reynolds appears as the Archbishop of Florence.

Attendance suffered with the lack of direct artist participation and was further hampered by chill spring rains and James River flooding.

12) Jazz Hands

For the 1933 Beaux Arts Ball, watercolorist Margaret May Dashiell recorded this unusual appearance of international entertainer and Richmond native Bill "Bojangles" Robinson with dancer Virginia Hooker. According to accounts, the two performed separately, but perhaps artistic license put them together.

The next day, Robinson participated in a Jackson Ward event during which he switched on traffic lights at Leigh and Adams street for the safety of African-American schoolchildren. His statue is on that spot today.

13) And Away We Go

Newspaper accounts describe this sedan chair as an antique, perhaps 400 years old. The Richmond News Leader described how "Nubian slaves" carried in Virginia Hooker prior to her dance for the 1933 Beaux Arts Ball. But shown here is Milicent Hartman. The draped men are probably Jefferson Hotel bellmen.

The Times-Dispatch spun the lackluster turnout for that year: "Richmond climbed up out of the Slough of Despond known as depression and ignored the gold standard and April's chilling rain to don sixteenth century costumes and revel in carnival, feasting and dancing at the Beaux Arts Ball."

From an original grass-roots effort to establish an institute of cultural arts, the state took the lead, aided by assistance from a federal Depression-era relief organization, the Works Project Administration. Adele Clark, a Richmond Academy of Arts organizer who conceived of the Beaux Arts Ball, directed the state's WPA art projects.

Thomas C. Parker, director of the Richmond Academy and favored by artists and one himself, was thought by many as qualified to be the curator of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. But Governor John Pollard supported Thomas C. Colt, a culture maven and former Academy trustee.

Colt played diplomat and smoothed over ill feelings — the Virginia Museum opened on Jan. 16, 1936, with Colt as its director.

Theresa Pollak photograph courtesy of Special Collections and Archives James Branch Cabell Library of VCU Libraries. All other images courtesy of the Valentine Richmond History Center.