WILLIAMSBURG, Va. (AP) – A building believed to be the oldest surviving schoolhouse for Black children in the U.S. was hoisted onto a flatbed truck on February 10 and moved a half-mile into Colonial Williamsburg, a Virginia museum that continues to expand its emphasis on African American history.
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — Two new textile exhibitions will open at the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg on December 3, and are sure to delight museum visitors. Stitched in Time: American Needlework, an exhibition of nearly 60 examples of bedrugs, whitework, embroidered hand towels, quilted petticoats, samplers, mourning and commemorative needlework, crewelwork, needlework with religious and geographical influences as well as sewing accessories, will remain on view through January 2, 2025 at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum. Additionally, an entirely new rotation of objects in the popular exhibition The Art of the Quilter that opened in 2021 will feature 15 pieces, 12 of which are recent acquisitions that have never before been displayed. This configuration of the exhibition, which will remain on view through August 2023 at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, will include 11 large quilts, one woven coverlet and three doll-size quilts that tell stories about people from America’s past and the societies in which they lived.
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. – A 17th-century caudle cup that belonged to the Puritan congregation of the First Church of Christ in Farmington, Connecticut, and was used there as a vessel for sacramental wine, was recently acquired by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, making it the earliest piece of American silver in its famed collection. The cup, wrought around 1670 in Boston, Massachusetts, was fashioned by the first silversmiths making goods in what is now the United States.
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — When “I made this…”: The Work of Black American Artists and Artisans opens on October 22 at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, one of the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, 28 examples of decorative art and folk art from the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s renowned collections will go on view in a groundbreaking exhibition. Never before have the art museums together exhibited objects made exclusively by Black artists and artisans from the 18th to the 20th centuries across so many genres in both decorative and folk arts. Focusing on the makers, this unique assemblage of paintings, furniture, textiles, decorative sculptures, quilts, ceramics, tools, metals and more will help illuminate their stories. The exhibit will remain on view through December 31, 2025.
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — Making Music in Early America, an exhibition opening on August 20 in the Mark M. and Rosemary W. Leckie Gallery at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, one of the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, will envelop visitors in the musical world of the 18th and 19th centuries.
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — Decades ago a simple wooden board in use as a shelf was discovered in Belle Farm, an 18th-century house in Gloucester County, Virginia. It turned out to be much more interesting than an untrained eye would notice at first glance: etched into the surface was the original design for two arches that are still to be seen in the house today. This extraordinary artifact provided Colonial Williamsburg’s architectural historians with valuable information on design development and layout in the last half of the 1700s. The design was later used as the model for the arches in the southwest dining room of the reconstructed King’s Arms Tavern on Colonial Williamsburg’s Duke of Gloucester Street.
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — As America honors Native American Heritage Month in November, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation announces that it has received a rare Navajo First Phase Chief’s Blanket from the late classic period (1865-1870) in the terraced style. The weaving is the first of its kind to enter the foundation’s collection and joins two Navajo pictorial weavings that were acquired in 2019.Continue reading
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation has added to its renowned American and British silver collection a rare tankard made circa 1795 by America’s best-known colonial silversmith, Paul Revere, Jr. (1734-1818) of Boston, Massachusetts.
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — Visitors to the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, one of the two expanded Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg in Williamsburg, Virginia, will experience two new textile exhibitions in summer 2021: The Art of the Quilter opened on July 3 in the Foster and Muriel McCarl Gallery, and Navajo Weavings: Adapting Tradition will open in the Mary B. and William Lehman Guyton Gallery in early August. These exhibitions are certain to be popular with museum goers as exhibitions displaying Colonial Williamsburg’s renowned quilt collection have always been favorites of Art Museums guests, and Navajo Weavings: Tradition and Trade, the first exhibition at Colonial Williamsburg on loan from the collection of American folk art enthusiasts Pat and Rex Lucke, has been embraced by visitors since it opened in 2018.
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — Earlier this year, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation announced the most significant single American decorative arts bequest in its 90-year history: The Joseph H. and June S. Hennage collection, with its more than 400 objects of various media, including American furniture and miniature furniture, American silver, and Chinese porcelain that will transform Colonial Williamsburg’s already renowned collections. To celebrate this momentous bequest, an exhibition of approximately 50 highlighted objects, A Gift to the Nation: The Joseph and June Hennage Collection, will open in the Miodrag and Elizabeth Ridgely Blagojevich Gallery at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, one of the newly expanded Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, on June 26 and remain on view through 2023. While the items selected for the exhibition represent only a fraction of the overall collection, they will illustrate the Hennages’ exceptional taste and collecting style, the American origins and family histories of the objects, and the couple’s passion for American decorative arts.