
Garden in Bloom
March 20, 2020
Although our site is currently closed during the COVID-19 crisis, our garden manager, Jody Wilken, shares what’s blooming in our spring garden. Species tulip, old variety’Wallflower”Yoshino’ close up’Yoshino’ Cherry TreesLoads of Daffys’Money Plant”G …
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Melchers to Appear in Impressionist Exhibition
March 13, 2020
Considering the Covid-19 maelstrom in which we find ourselves surrounded, I take great pleasure in having to share some happy news by giving a shout out to our favorite local artist Gari Melchers. A work by Melchers entitled Snow Scene is included in a …
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Staff Teams Up to Reconstruct Melchers-Era Farm Building
October 24, 2019
Thanks to the careful research of former Cultural Resource Manager Beate Jensen and the expert carpentry of our Maintenance Manager, Dave Ludeker and Maintenance Assistant, Daniel Carter, the appearance of the grounds and dependencies at Belmont reads …
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Local Poet Extols Belmont’s Spirit of Place
September 20, 2019
When poet, writer and editor Elizabeth Spencer Spragins of Fredericksburg travels the globe, her antennae are tuned to sacred echoes in the natural and manmade world, the consequences of which are the very personal and lyrical Celtic verse forms that s …
Read moreA “Back Stairs” Party to Remember
August 6, 2019
Recently in my research I ran across a letter composed by the wife of Gari Melchers that I think is worth sharing. In it Mrs. Melchers recounted an episode that occurred during the couple’s residence in Germany from 1909 to 1915. Gari Melchers was call …
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Dialogic Method, Frank Vagnone, Historic House Museum, Re-imagined House Tour
New Historic House Museum Tour Unveiled
July 14, 2019
We have recently turned our traditional historic house tour on its ear. The standard 30-minute, guided docent monologue has been torn apart and put back together in a whole new way. One of the best preserved artist homes and working studios …
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Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's disease, Art, Art Gallery, Dementia, Gari Melchers Home and Studio, Visual Arts
Picturing New Connections: An Art Program for People with Memory Loss
June 22, 2019
Sitting in a doctor’s office a few years ago, I picked up an old copy of Neurology Now and read an article that intrigued me as a museum educator. The author described a new tour, Meet Me at MoMA, introduced by the Museum of Modern Art 2006 to sp …
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Gari Melchers, John Barton Payne, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Familiar Face in the News
June 11, 2019
Reproduced in the 2019 Summer issue of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Magazine is a 1930 portrait painted by Gari Melchers of John Barton Payne. The caption with it announces a new practice being instituted by museum conservators to display on-going …
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Seventeenth Century Status Symbol
May 31, 2019
Sometimes when our guests enter the dining room and encounter the monumental painting Market Scene (above, 12′ x 7′) they profess to having seen it somewhere before. Are they imagining it? Probably not! Many of our guests are true globetrotters who mi …
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Black Hawk Life Cast Used for Gari Melchers’ ‘Conspiracy of Pontiac’ Mural
May 28, 2019
Gari Melchers Home and Studio docent Murray Corliss contributed to this post. This life cast, or three-dimensional plaster cast made from a mold of a living body, is placed high on a Dutch cabinet in Gari Melchers’ Falmouth studio quietly watching over …
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