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For Immediate Release: February 13, 2007
GARI MELCHERS HOME AND STUDIO DEBUTS SPOTLIGHT EXHIBITION SERIES
Fredericksburg, Va. – Gari Melchers Home and Studio has debuted the first in an ongoing series of Spotlight Exhibitions intended to highlight significant individual paintings or small groups of special interest paintings. The Spotlight Exhibition is currently showing in the Studio’s Pavilion Gallery and features loans from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts as well as recently conserved Melchers works.
The exhibition will run through July 8, and admission is included with daily fees of $10 for adults and $5 for children age 6-18. Admission is free for children 5 and under and members of Friends of Belmont.
The four recently conserved Melchers works included in the Spotlight Exhibition, two of which have not been viewed in many years owing to serious deterioration, range in date from his early art school days to his twilight years at Belmont. The selection reflects Melchers’ stylistic evolution from realism to Impressionism.
Funded by a $16,100 grant from the Sunshine Lady Foundation, the conservation work was completed by former Fredericksburg conservator Perry Hurt at the North Carolina Museum of Art’s Regional Conservation Lab in Raleigh, N.C. A fifth painting included in the grant will be sent to the conservator’s lab this month.
Also featured in the Spotlight Exhibition are two paintings on long-term loan from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The loaned pictures, including one work executed by Gari Melchers’ wife, Corinne, are paired with several paintings, artifacts and archival documents from Belmont’s extensive collection. This unique arrangement offers an intimate glimpse into the couples’ personal tastes and talents and the setting of their life in pre-WWI Germany.
Gari Melchers Home and Studio at Belmont is a 26-acre estate and former residence of the American figure painter Gari Melchers and his wife Corinne. The property, which is part of the University of Mary Washington, is both a Virginia Historic Landmark and a National Historic Landmark. Located at 224 Washington St. in Falmouth, Va., a quarter mile west of the intersection of U.S. 1 and U.S. 17, it is open daily with an admission charge. For more information, call the museum at (540) 654-1015 or visit www.GariMelchers.org.
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