Months of planning and work have finally paid off! Since the discovery of the prints in 2015 a lot of work had to be done before we could make our new dinosaur-footprint guide available to our guests. Dr. Weems and other paleontologists found time to m …

Recently when my husband and I were visiting our son we spent a pleasurable afternoon in the Seattle Art Museum. They have a wonderful collection.  In anticipation of my upcoming trip to the Hudson River Valley, I paid particular attention to the pione …

An old ship model now hangs aloft in one corner of Gari Melchers’ studio at Belmont. It is the very same model the painter suspended from the ceiling of his studio in Holland years earlier, as documented by a photograph of his studio interior from arou …

In 2013, Belmont hired Susan Buck, Ph.D. to conduct a comprehensive interior paint analysis of the house museum.  Buck is the same conservator who worked on the house’s exterior paint research which was featured in University of Mary Washington’s …

When we made the decision to install two meadows on former pasture land in the year 2000, we were one of the first, if not the first, historic site in Virginia to create native grassland wildlife habitats. You can read more about the many benefits of h …

Reprinted from Sketches, a Newsletter for the Friends of Belmont, Spring/Summer 2005   On December 1, 2004, some staggering news from New York may have had Gari Melchers doing flip-flops in his grave; the staff at Belmont certainly met the report with …

I subscribe to the theory of six points of separation, the idea that each person is connected to anyone else in the world by no more than six other intermediaries, at least where Gari Melchers is concerned.  If I had a dollar for every time someone tol …

  I love this late 1920s candid shot of Gari Melchers posing with his masterpiece The Smithy. The identity of the exhibition and hosting institution is unclear, but it sure does look like something has caught the master’s undivided attention. Do y …

Long before the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. finally closed its doors in 2014 it was already divesting itself of paintings. One important example which had come to them through the renowned collector Duncan Phillips was The Smithy, painted around 1898 by Gari Melchers.

  Pipevine swallowtail on Monarda The Pipevine Swallowtail, Battus philenor, is a beautiful butterfly that has an upper surface of iridescent blue or blue-green on its hind-wing.  The underside of the hind-wing has a row of 7 round orange spots in …