The galleries were closed for a year during the museum’s showing of Splendors of Ancient Egypt.

"Sydney and Frances Lewis’ exemplary generosity to the people of Virginia through their gift to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in 1985 catapulted the museum’s collections into an international sphere," says Richard B. Woodward, Senior Associate Director, Exhibitions and Programs, of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

"Many works acquired by the Lewises, sometimes when the artists were hardly known, have now become recognized masterpieces. The museum is proud to display these works in newly designed galleries," he adds. “The new installation presents a fresh perspective on the collection for museum visitors, offering new vistas and gallery configurations that emphasize the rich sequence of styles and ideas in the development of Modern and Contemporary art,” says John Ravenal, the museum’s curator of art after 1900.

Important works that had been in storage since the 1980s, along with many favorites, represent the museum’s holdings of painting and sculpture from about 1945 to the present.

“Building upon the magnificent foundation of works given by the Lewises, the installation also dispalys a number of important works acquired in the past year,” Ravenal says.

Among those recent acquisitions is a wall drawing by eminent American artist Sol LeWitt (b. 1928). LeWitt’s multi-part work has been painted directly onto the walls at the entry to the Lewis Galleries, “making a colorful and monumental introduction to the collection within,” Ravenal says.

LeWitt first came to prominence in the mid-1960s as a pioneer of Conceptual art, an international movement that emphasized the idea of an artwork more than its physical form. Also on view for the first time since its acquisition in 1999 is a 1997 oil-on-canvas-on-wood work, Summer Wind, by American artist Elizabeth Murray (b. 1940). The large and colorful painting measures approximately 10 feet by 9 feet and is characteristic of the artist’s fragmented, multi-panel works.