THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 10, 1996 TAG: 9603080080
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
LAVISH AND RARE treasures from imperial Russia will go on view next Sunday at The Arts Center of the Portsmouth Museums.
To celebrate this exhibition coup, the museum is staging a gala opening-night party Saturday. From 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., guests can preview the art and enjoy champagne and hors d'oeuvres.
Admission to the black-tie-optional preview is a $30 donation per person. Deadline for reservations is 5 p.m. Wednesday. Call 393-8983.
Among the works on view will be some 30 objects by Peter Carl Faberge (1846-1920), including a circa 1900 ``presentation egg'' never displayed in the United States. Also, 28 mostly Russian paintings dating from 1764 to 1989 will be shown.
These works will expand an exhibit of 74 Russian icon paintings that went on view in December. All of the works are on loan from a private local collection.
The show was organized by Dr. R. Peter Mooz, who has been the Arts Center's curator since October. In 1990, while running The Hall of State in Dallas, Mooz obtained an international touring show of objects owned by Catherine the Great, the 18th century Russian empress who started the renowned art collection housed in The Hermitage in St. Petersburg. The event brought 600,000 people to Mooz's museum in five months, he said.
The Russian art will be on view in the museum's first-floor galleries through April 21. The main gallery on the second floor currently features two shows about man's perception of animals through the ages - ``Bestial Angels,'' a regional touring exhibit, and ``Messengers, Harbingers and Guardians,'' a Tidewater Artists Association juried show.
Admission to the museum is $1. An additional donation of $3 per person is requested for the Russian show. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday. Call 393-8543 for more information. LIFE AFTER WARHOL
The founding director of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Thomas N. Armstrong III, is due back in Williamsburg next weekend.
The Portsmouth-born Armstrong is the juror for ``American Drawing Biennial V,'' a national drawing competition open to all American artists living in the United States.
The exhibit opens Friday at 5:30 p.m. with a public reception at the Muscarelle Museum of Art, part of the College of William and Mary. At 2 p.m. Sunday, Armstrong will give a gallery talk. Both events, as well as show admission, are free.
Armstrong chose 62 works from about 500 entries by artists from 37 states.
The director was last here in January 1995, one month before he surprised the art world by quitting his nine-month post in Pittsburgh. He had visited here to lecture on Warhol in connection with an exhibit of the Pop artist's prints at the Muscarelle.
So, what's a big city director doing in Colonial quarters? He began his museum career as curator, then associate director of Colonial Williamsburg's Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center from 1967 until 1971.
His career then catapulted: From 1973 to 1990, Armstrong was director of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
The Muscarelle is on Jamestown Road, next to Phi Beta Kappa Hall on campus. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. weekdays, noon to 4 p.m. weekends. Call 221-2700 for more information. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
MARI L. MANN
A ``presentation egg'' by Peter Carl Faberge will be among the
Russian treasures at The Arts Center of the Portsmouth Museums.
by CNB