RICHMOND, VA.- The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) has recently added a compelling and diverse group of artworks to the museum’s permanent collection. VMFA purchased 165 works of art and received 435 gifts from more than 50 generous donors during fiscal year 2025.

“We are overjoyed to continue expanding our comprehensive art holdings at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, which will enrich the lives of Virginians for generations to come,” said VMFA’s Director and CEO Alex Nyerges. “Some of these works will be showcased in the museum’s new wing, which will include expanded galleries for African, American, Indigenous American and 21st-century art.”

VMFA’s illustrious permanent collection has grown from 51 works of art at the time of the museum’s founding in 1936 to more than 50,000 works today, spanning 6,000 years of global history.

“In the process of expanding VMFA’s permanent collection during the past 12 months, the museum’s curators have researched and acquired a wonderful array of artworks that reflect artistic innovation, storytelling and creativity in our region and across the globe,” said Artistic Director and Chief Curator Dr. Michael Taylor. “Through these acquisitions, which have broadened and deepened our holdings in every collecting area of the institution, VMFA continues to fulfill its profound commitment to building a world-class collection and representing and serving all of the Commonwealth’s communities.”

Works by artists from diverse periods and cultures have been added to the permanent collection. The museum’s South Asian holdings were enhanced through the acquisition of an exquisite 18th-century emerald green glass and gold huqqa base. This handsome object speaks to the opulence of India’s royal courts, the extremely high levels of craftsmanship practiced in their ateliers, and multiple vectors of world-spanning trade that converged in the early modern period.

“The huqqa base raises fascinating cross-cultural conversations around European colonialism, global commerce and even tobacco production in Virginia,” said Dr. John Henry Rice, VMFA’s E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Curator of South Asian and Islamic Art.

The museum was also pleased to add to its collection of decorative arts a monumental Three-Handled Vase created in the late 19th century by renowned French Art Nouveau ceramicist Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat (French, 1844–1910). In addition to its commanding scale, the vase is distinguished by its rich, multicolored glazes. It features the artist’s signature hue, “Dalpayrat rouge,” a deep oxblood red achieved with great difficulty through the use of copper oxides, which were notoriously unpredictable during firing. Inspired in part by Chinese sang-de-boeuf glazing traditions dating back to the 1700s, Dalpayrat’s approach embraced the expressive possibilities of stoneware, which earned him international acclaim in the 1890s and early 1900s.

“It complements VMFA’s existing, smaller Dalpayrat vase and will serve as a cornerstone for new narratives about late 19th-century design innovation,” said Dr. Alisa Chiles, the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Decorative Arts, 1890 to the Present.

Another noteworthy acquisition is the 1944 painting Children’s Fear of Idols II by Surrealist artist Roberto Matta (Chilean, 1911–2002). In this painting, which was donated by Florence and Brian Mahony, Matta depicted a nebulous spatial realm, filled with linear whirlpools and electromagnetic force fields.

“The end result is a masterpiece of 1940s Surrealist painting that expresses both the vastness of the universe and the profound depths of the human psyche during a time of global conflict,” said Dr. Taylor. “This is the first painting by the artist to enter VMFA’s collection and it will resonate with the museum’s outstanding collections of Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. American artists in the mid-20th century learned from Matta’s use of heroic scale, apocalyptic imagery and innovative techniques, especially automatism, as they searched for a new language of archetypal symbols.”

Highlights of VMFA’s new acquisitions also include significant additions to its Indigenous American art holdings. One such work is Indian Cowboy and Horse, painted in 1979 by Fritz Scholder (La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians, 1937–2005). An iconic figure, the cowboy is symbolic of American independence, masculinity and Westward expansion, and is often pictured in constant conflict with Indigenous people.

“While Scholder’s Indigenous cowboy bears such archetypal markings — Western wear, a horse companion, a sense of stoicism and a holstered gun — he is rendered in bubblegum pink and vibrant blue to sardonically undercut assumptive boundaries between American cowboys and Indigenous people as they are seen in popular culture,” said Siera Hyte, VMFA’s Schiller Family Curator of Indigenous American Art. The museum ultimately intends to feature Scholder’s painting as a cornerstone of the expanded galleries for Indigenous American art in the new wing.

The museum’s efforts to broaden the scope of its holdings by living artists is also evident in recent additions to the collection. A series of eight photographic collage works by Carla J. Williams (American, born 1965), titled How to Read Character (1990–1991), represents a significant addition to the VMFA’s photography collection.

“Across this series, Williams conjures a long and often painful history of representation of Black and female bodies — as scientific specimens, as hypersexualized “Venus Noire,” as powerless subjects ripe for colonization — and turns them on their head, offering a powerful counterpoint that acknowledges and transforms this pictorial legacy,” said Dr. Sarah Kennel, the Aaron Siskind Curator of Photography and Director of the Raysor Center at VMFA.

Blacker Than a Hundred Midnights Down in a Cypress Swamp, a monumental painting from the 1970s by Mary Lovelace O’Neal (American, born 1942), takes its title from a line in the poem “The Creation” (1922) by African American writer, attorney and activist James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938).

“O’Neal’s Lampblack series, which includes this monumental painting, explores Blackness as a color, material and metaphor that denotes the Southern soil to the opaque density of space,” said Valerie Cassel Oliver, the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at VMFA. “A work of notable scale, dazzling beauty and historical importance, Blacker Than a Hundred Midnights Down in a Cypress Swamp will add to our growing collection of abstract paintings and artworks from this period.”

Rounding out the museum’s acquisitions of works by contemporary artists are three paintings by Solomon Wolde (Ethiopian, born 1982): Masked Memories II, from 2023, and Eternal Echoes I and Eternal Echoes II, both completed in 2024. These paintings are symbols of conscience, seeking to harmonize the present with what is past and finding the balance in nature. Wolde does this with the masterful use of resplendent colors that help to capture the elusive harmony that once echoed within many Ethiopian village settings.

“The stylized images in this series become an homage to the mothers who have died or have been displaced during times of war and upheaval, leaving them emotionally damaged,” noted Dr. Ndubuisi C. Ezeluomba, VMFA’s Curator of African Art. “Wolde honors these women by depicting these mother figures in their finest clothes, with a demeanor that reflects their elegance, strength and wisdom.” After the museum’s new wing is complete, these paintings will be installed in the expanded African art galleries, complementing other works in the Richard B. Woodward Gallery of Ethiopian Art.