Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, Virginia

Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, Virginia

 Roanoke, Virginia, has a little over 300,000 people.  In a town this size, 'culture' is usually firmly entrenched in the minor leagues.  (Yes, we are watching baseball every day.)  No matter the size of the town, there's always someone who is financially backing whatever culture can be found.  If you've been to Fort Worth, then you know the Bass family has been crucial for decades in elevating the culture of this dusty western town way above what would normally be expected..

The Bass equivalent in Roanoke is a family named Taubman.  Nicolas Taubman inherited Advance Auto Parts from his father Arthur.  He was CEO of this company until 2005 when he was appointed Ambassador to Romania.  His wife, Eugenia (Jenny) is a naturalized citizen from Bulgaria.  Mr. Taubman was born in Roanoke, and the couple still make their home here.  Their philanthropy is responsible for the new art museum.  Donating $15 million will get your name on the marquee. 

The Taubman Museum of Art (see picture above) was conceived and designed by Randall Stout, an award winning architect.  The museum points to the future with the 75' atrium designed to be lighted at night.  New types of translucent material keep the interior cool during the day.  The rest of the museum represents the hills and valley of the Blue Ridge mountains which surround the Roanoke Valley.  The museum was designed not only to display the art collection but also to offer the community spaces for celebration events such as anniversaries, weddings and birthdays.  There's a theater, a cafe, and meeting rooms.  Even with all that, two things stick out for me:  The building is beautiful, and admission to the museum is FREE.  

The early motivation for a new building for the museum was the coup of landing the collection of Peggy Eakins, the grand niece of Thomas Eakins, the leading American realism painter of the nineteen century who lived in Roanoke.  [Realism refers to the painter's choice of subjects - ordinary places and ordinary people.]  The Roanoke art community lobbied Peggy and won the collection instead of Philadelphia, where Eakins was born and taught at the Philadelphia Art Institute.  He was an early advocate for drawing from 'life' no matter your gender.  He put his $$ where his mouth was because  he was fired for removing the loin cloth of a model in a mixed gender drawing class.  This was the episode that was the final straw of the conservative artists/benefactors who ran the Institute and were happy to be rid of him and his controversial ideas.    

Eakins was also one of the first artists to use photographs as the basis for some of his portraits.  The museum had pictures used by him and the finished portrait he completed hung nearby.

This is William McDowell.

Eakins most famous painting, "Dr. Samuel Gross (Gross Clinic)" was rejected by critics and the public alike.  It depicts Dr. Gross giving a lecture waving a bloody scalpel while talking over the gory patient.  Neither the critics nor the public ever warmed to the monumental talent of this painter during his lifetime.  Everyone else in the art world was dabbling with impressionistic landscapes while Eakins painted ordinary people, often in motion, and sometimes nude.  Upon his death in 1916, the more than 300 paintings that survived him couldn't be given away.  This all changed when the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1917 opened an exhibition of his work.  Eakins wife, Susan McDowell Eakins, also an artist, who was his student, painted the picture I loved the most of all the Eakins pictures now owned by the Taubman Museum.  It was painted in 1916, the year of his death.  It's a self portrait called "Anguish".  She lived another 22 years, dying in 1938.

The Taubman is not just an homage to Thomas Eakins and his family.  There were many fine paintings, decor, sculptures, and exhibitions.  I think you will find two of the exhibitions to be most interesting:  One is about Louis Tiffany, and the other is about Judith Leiber who created special occasion handbags.  I also enjoyed the repurposing of the Opera costumes which was the exhibition hanging in  the atrium.  

Here are the photos:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Kf21kSE68s2pTiyp8