At 60, Peninsula Fine Arts Centre is set to say goodbye
VIRGINIA: This has been a surreal year for the Peninsula Fine Arts Center. It will shuter its doors on Dec. 31 ater nearly 60 years in existence. Its final show, which was planned before staff knew the museum would close, includes some of the world’s most recognisable names in the genre of, well, surrealism. “Masters of Surrealism: Picasso, Dalí and Miro,” will open on Saturday and remain on display through Dec. 20. It includes more than 60 prints that look at a period of art and literature that spurned the traditional for experimental methods that relied more on the artist’s subconscious than sight. The subject mater sounds adult but several children’s authors incorporated surrealism into their fantastical storylines and characters. Works by Maurice Sendak, author of “Where the Wild Things Are,” and Theodor “Ted” Geisel, best known as Dr. Seuss, are in the exhibition.
The show pulls from several sources including a local, private collection, The Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco; The Eric Carle Museum in Amherst, Massachusets; the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia; and R. Michelson Galleries in Northampton, Massachusets. “Surrealism can be a very challenging art to view,” said Courtney Gardner, executive director of the museum. Since this exhibition will be PFAC’S finale, she said the curators wanted to create an unforgetable show that includes components for the family. “We really do think it’s going to be a really interesting way for families to engage in well-known artists like Picasso and Dalí,” she said, “then you have well-known children’s books that people have grown up with.”
Surrealism was a literary, political and art movement that grew in Paris in the 1920s as people were rebuilding their physical and emotional lives ater World War I. Poet André Breton worked in psychiatric units during the war and afterward became one of many who was disillusioned with a world that had created a war. He wanted to create poetry and art that looked at the world in unconventional ways. Breton was a fan of Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. Freud believed that dreaming was one way for people to tap into their unconsciousness where he believed desires and anxieties lurked. Breton was a believer. He wrote in his 1924 “Manifesto of Surrealism:” “I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams.”
Breton and fellow thinkers formed a group that called themselves “Surrealists,” and created magazines and hosted art shows. Surrealist artwork had similar elements like a dream-like quality to a painting or using dislocated scenes and distorted figures. The popularity of artists like Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Joan Miro extended surrealism around the globe. Janice Hathaway, a professor of art at Thomas Nelson Community College, started working as a surrealist in the mid-1970s. She was atracted to the image combinations that surrealists use and during the years has created a process that digitally combines photos and painterly techniques that she calls “transmorgraphy.” Hathaway’s transmorpgraphs are “living moments as imaginary situations,” and several of her pieces are included in the PFAC show.
Gardner said the museum’s mission has always been about being the community’s museum, and that includes showcasing local talent and also bringing a world of art to people who might not see it any other way. She’s glad that it will be living out its mission until the end, she said. “We’re very cognizant, particularly for some children and families, they’re not going to go to the Smithsonian, or The Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Dalí Museum in Florida. They’re never going to make it there,” Gardner said. Gardner said, “And yet, we want them to have the same opportunities as anybody else. That is so important to this institution.”
In 1962, PFAC started to foster the arts on the Peninsula. Since its inception, PFAC has been a chapter affiliate of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. It started with an emphasis on selling local art, having juried exhibitions with prizes, educating through artist workshops and classes, and exhibiting art. In 2020, we have not strayed far from that original mission. To this day, artists from around the country will visit and tell us they took their first class at PFAC or they were in their first exhibition at PFAC.
“Even now during COVID, we have kept up our community outreach. We reach schoolchildren through online art lessons, “Art Start,” for preschoolers every Wednesday, and virtual tours. Offering digital content is a way to continue to be responsive while still opening our doors to the general public for those who feel comfortable visiting in-person. That is one thing I am so proud of — that during my lifetime, the PFAC has always had the community front and center, whether it’s the local art community or the citizens of our community.” “I have enjoyed sharing my passion for the PFAC, creativity, and the museum education role with the community. But I think what I will miss most are the people: the teaching artists, the staff and volunteers I have worked with along the way. I am thankful for the memories and I will take them with me wherever I go.” She added, “I have been involved with the PFAC as a volunteer since the eighth grade, a former board member, and a staff member for a total of 13 years.”