The VMFA
The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is the beating heart of Richmond’s museum district. I’ve been a member since 2014, when I first started attending VCU. Here, I used to perch in the BESTCafe with my history textbooks and notebooks and I’d study for hours, fueled by unlimited Blanchard’s coffee refills and endless art exhibits.
Almost the entire museum is free, except for their rotating special exhibit. Membership gets you free parking in the garage (though there is nearby street parking), discounts at the cafe, and free entrance to special exhibits. The VMFA offers far more than art on walls, however. There are free live jazz nights, wine nights out on the sculpture-strewn lawn, trivia nights, art history lectures, and film screenings. The museum also has a full calendar of art classes and workshops teaching everything from landscape painting to poetry. For those interested in research, there is a quiet reading room full of archives and resources to explore. It’s the only museum open 365 days a year with free general admission.
The museum’s collection of over 50,000 works of art spans 6,000 years of history. You could easily spend an entire day exploring the three floors of exhibits. Which you’ll enjoy the most really depends on your own tastes and interests. I love the art of the ancients — they have work from Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, China, Japan, and Korea. There’s something so moving and breathtaking about looking at something real from a time long past. You can look at the hieroglyphics carved on old Egyptian coffins and know that this once carried a real human being, and that the designs say something about who they were and what they will expect in the afterlife. You can look at Etruscan gold earrings and imagine the wealthy woman who wore them. You can peek at the intricate Faberge eggs of Imperial Russia, and think about how people have always loved having cute little trinkets. They were essentially the Romanov’s version of Labubus. (I kid)
There’s also tons of gorgeous paintings from the Renaissance, the Baroque period, all the way to 20th century impressionists and abstract painters. They have a wide selection of modern art as well, and I’ll be completely real — that’s the art I’m least interested in so I won’t really be talking about that. Hey, it’s my blog!
Whatever tickles your fancy, you should visit the VMFA if you haven’t yet. (Yes, I have met Richmonders who haven’t been, and yes I AM SHAMING YOU!) Art is for everyone, and it’s totally free. And did I mention unlimited free coffee refills? ˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗