The Art Museum of West Virginia University has received an Access for All Grant from the Art Bridges Foundation to fund educational projects through the next three years.  

The Access for All Grant is the fourth partnership between Art Bridges Foundation and the Art Museum of WVU. Art Bridges has previously supported the Blanche Lazzell traveling exhibition and the Bridge Ahead Initiative to help the museum connect with the community remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Art Museum also worked with Art Bridges on implementing Collaboration for Ongoing Visitor Surveys (COVES), which helps the museum learn about visitor demographics and experiences.  

Q: Can you tell me about your connection to WVU? Did you go to school here, what years, what activities were you involved in?

A: As a WV native, I have always felt a connection to WVU.  I started taking clarinet lessons in Morgantown when I was 15. During high school, I attended Mountaineer Music camp two summers and had been a member of various All-State conferences that were held in Morgantown. Even after those positive experiences I thought I would attend a smaller school.  But in the Spring of 1998 the Pride of WV sent a Keynotes CD to every high school in the state after receiving the Sudler Trophy, and I was hooked. I graduated from the College of Creative Arts in 2002 with a degree in Music Education. While at WVU I was a member of various instrumental ensembles including the Pride of WV, where I served as a drum major for three seasons.  I also was a member of Mountain Honorary. 

The Art Museum of WVU has selected participants for its second Art Museum Faculty Fellowship and Jacknowitz Summer Internship for Summer 2023.

Dr. Erik Herron, Eberly Family Distinguished Professor of Political Science at WVU, will serve as the second Art Museum of WVU Faculty Fellow. Funded through private donations through the WVU Foundation, the Faculty Fellowship is designed to provide the opportunity for faculty and instructors from across disciplines to enhance their teaching and scholarship by engaging with the Art Museum’s permanent collection of more than 4,000 objects. 

A major exhibition at the Art Museum of West Virginia University this spring explores society’s relationship with the violin and its meanings over time and across the globe.

For nearly the entire history of the medium, violins have appeared in photographs in ways that signify talent, status, geography, and culture—and have often been presented as beautiful objects unto themselves.

George Lilley, a longtime supporter of West Virginia University, has donated $50,000 to the Art Museum of WVU to support a new major acquisitions fund.

Lilley has lived and worked in West Virginia for more than 50 years. Together with his wife, Mavis Grant, the couple has a passion for helping their community with an emphasis on creating opportunities for art education.

The Art Museum of West Virginia University reopens for the spring semester on Saturday, Jan. 21, with new exhibitions in both galleries, including “In/Humanity: Combat and War in Art.”

“In/Humanity: Combat and War in Art” focuses on how war and combat are inextricably part of the human experience, and art helps us make sense of the ways such conflict brings out the worst—and sometimes the best—in society. 

The Art Museum of West Virginia University celebrated its seventh birthday last month. Since its opening in August 2015, the museum has inspired and educated more than 35,000 visitors.

The Art Museum of WVU’s mission to provide a welcoming and stimulating educational and research environment for diverse audiences to experience the transforming power of art wouldn’t be possible without incredible donors who helped fund the building, the museum’s collection of more than 4,000 works of art, programming and traveling exhibitions.

The Art Museum of West Virginia University is pleased to announce generous support from Art Bridges to develop and tour a major exhibition of the work of Blanche Lazzell, one of the most progressive American artists of the first half of the twentieth century. A West Virginia native, Lazzell created some of the earliest abstract paintings in the United States and is one of only 23 artists currently represented in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism. While Lazzell’s role in avant-garde American art is recognized within specialists’ circles, she has not received a major solo exhibition in nearly two decades and is due for a reassessment. The award from Art Bridges allows the Art Museum of West Virginia University to create such an exhibition from their extensive holdings, now increased by the museum’s acquisition of four new works by the artist, including the white line color woodblock print West Virginia University Farmhouse (1950).

Established in 2017, the Art Bridges foundation is dedicated to expanding access to American art across the U.S. Art Bridges works with museums of all sizes to provide financial and strategic support to get art out of storage and into communities. The foundation supports arts projects that educate, insprire, and deepen engagement with local audiences. 

The Art Museum of West Virginia University presents “Storywork: The Prints of Marie Watt, From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation” through Dec. 11.

Located in the Upper Gallery at the Art Museum of WVU, “Storywork” celebrates the work of Marie Watt (Seneca, b. 1967), one of the country’s most celebrated contemporary artists, whose work draws on personal experience, Indigenous traditions, proto-feminism, mythology, and art history.
“Storywork” is a comprehensive look at Watt’s 30-year career, including more than 50 original prints and sculptural works. The exhibition also showcases Watt’s deep veneration for Indigenous narratives, especially those informed by her own Seneca heritage.

The Art Museum of WVU has selected participants for its inaugural Art Museum Faculty Fellowship and Jacknowitz Summer Internship for Summer 2022. Both of these positions are central to the Art Museum of WVU’s efforts in engaging both students and faculty in object-centered learning and professional development.

Dr. Lisa Di Bartolomeo will serve as the inaugural Art Museum of WVU Faculty Fellow. Over a period of four weeks this summer, Di Bartolomeo will work closely with curator Robert Bridges, and educational programs manager Dr. Heather Harris to select works from the museum’s collection and develop an exhibition and related materials for display in the McGee Gallery in Spring 2023. The Faculty Fellowship is designed to provide the opportunity for faculty and instructors from across disciplines to enhance their teaching and scholarship by engaging with the Art Museum’s permanent collection of more than 4,000 objects. A teaching professor in the Department of World Languages, Literatures & Linguistics, Di Bartolomeo will integrate the exhibition into her course, “The Holocaust in East European Literature and Film,” and also present a public program at the Art Museum during the run of the exhibition. She was selected from a pool of applicants to an open call to all WVU clinical, teaching, and service track faculty as well faculty equivalents and other professionals with teaching responsibilities.