New Museums All Around

Bechtler Museum of Modern Art; Mario Botta architect

This is a very exciting time, there are lots of new and renovated museums opening this year.

Carol Miller, Quilt University, has great pictures of the reopening of one of my all time favorite museums, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond VA. I grew up in walking distance and took my first art classes there during elementary school. Several of Monet's waterlilies were in the downstairs hallway next to student classrooms, to give you some idea of how long ago this was. Currently they have an exhibition on Tiffany windows and glass. This fall they will have an exhibition on quilts from the Winterthur Museum collection.

In Charlotte NC we are blessed with 2 new or upgraded museums, one is The Bechtler Museum of Modern Art. It is a marvel of architecture housing an incredible multimillion dollar collection of early 20th century art donated by Andreas Bechtler. He and his parents collected the art over the last 75 years from artists they knew personally. I was delighted to see a variety of fiber pieces by very well known artists. They were not fiber artists, but painters who had translated their art into fiber.

Another time I will write about the new Harvey B Gantt Museum of African-American Art + Culture. It is another wonderfully, expanded and upgraded museum in Charlotte. The architect used design motifs from the quilting tradition for the outside walls.

Have you visited any new museums or expanded museums? Any fiber art represented in them? Please share.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Nancy