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Murry DePillars: Double Vision Exhibit

Date(s)

  • March 13, 2017 | 10:00 am

Murry DePillars: Double Vision is an exhibition of works organized around Murry DePillars’ dual role of artist and educator. As both an accomplished artist and dedicated dean of VCU’s School of the Arts from 1976 until 1995, Murry DePillars: Double Vision highlights his important legacy. A visionary with a dual passion, DePillars applied his fervent artistic mission to the development of VCU’s School of the Arts into one of the largest art schools in the country, while maintaining his artistic practice in innovative ways.

DePillars’ compulsion to create works of art cannot be separated from his compulsion to educate; his complex paintings are not only executed with virtuosity, but their subjects are highly researched. Each work provides a dynamic aesthetic experience as well as an opportunity to learn about history and culture. The thirty-seven works included in this retrospective exhibition span DePillars’ entire career, including works from 1964 through 2007, and exemplify his diverse and prodigious oeuvre.

This is the first original exhibition organized by the Black History Museum & Cultural Center of Virginia for its new facility at the historic Leigh Street Armory. The imagery and iconography included in DePillars’ paintings cover a broad history, spanning themes from ancestral Africa, the period of American slavery, and more recent historical events including the Civil Rights Movement, as well as contemporary cultural traditions.