The newly renovated Muscarelle Museum of Art at William & Mary opens with an airy, light-filled atrium. From there, a grand staircase leads to 14 galleries showcasing a notable collection from Georgia O'Keefe's celebrated "White Flower" to a dynamic suite of screen prints by icon Jacob Lawrence to paintings from artists Emmi Whitehorse and Hughie Lee-Smith.
The museum reopens Saturday after closing in December 2022 for the $46 million project that nearly tripled its size. The museum created the Martha Wren Briggs Center for the Visual Arts, named after its lead donor and alumna.
Among the new amenities is a flexible event space that can host as many as 200 people for seminars, workshops and artist receptions. Art and art history faculty are encouraged to make the museum part of the curriculum. A Monday morning, hands-on series that started last year for homeschool students continues. University students can spread out to study among eight library tables. Two new seminar rooms invite collaboration.
“If you spent time in the Muscarelle before our expansion, you would know we’re a sparky museum that went out and worked hard to do interesting things for both the university community at William & Mary and the region,” said Director David Brashear. “The biggest thing about what’s happened is how transformational it is ... There’s a lot of teaching and learning and celebratory space that was not part of the museum before.”
Sky bridges connect five older galleries to eight new ones. The Muscarelle didn't have the room before to exhibit a fraction of its nearly 8,000-piece collection. The 42,000 additional square feet allow for displaying more such as a vibrant still life by Luigi Lucioni and recent gifts of a John Sloan landscape and a William Glackens still life.
Lawrence's series "The Life of Toussaint L'Ouverture" is on display for the first time since its acquisition in 2022. It documents the life of the leader of Haiti's slave rebellion in 1791 through 1804. The series made Lawrence one of the first nationally recognized African American artists after its unveiling in 1941.
"We're one of the only museums to own all 15 prints," Brashear said.
Gallery 8 houses Pablo Atchugarry's white Carrara marble sculpture installed next to a floor-to-ceiling window on the museum's west side. The piece stands nearly 8 feet tall. Seventy-five works on loan comprise the next three galleries, part of “William and Mary Collects III," on view through June 8.
The first "William and Mary Collects" dates to the museum's opening in 1983. A second "William and Mary II" recognized the museum's 20th anniversary. Two galleries on the lower level focus on the founding of William & Mary in 1693, the granting of its royal charter and the architectural history of the Muscarelle.
Brashear said the museum has graduated into more than a university museum.
“We want students and faculty and staff to come in and out all day long,” he said. “But we also want people who visit Williamsburg to come here. We want people from the region to make it a destination.”
A café tucked behind the museum gift shop opens later this month. Brashear is hopeful more Williamsburg residents will become regulars and dine or drop by for a glass of wine later in the day.
Three galleries are vacant for a show of 25 Michelangelo drawings made while the Italian Old Master was planning his work in the Sistine Chapel in the mid-1500s. “The Last Judgment” opens March 6.
Visit The Muscarelle Museum of Art for more information.
