In keeping with our mission, The Fralin Museum of Art at The University of Virginia encourages the spirit of curiosity and promotes diversity of thought through the study, care, and celebration of art.
The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia maintains a comprehensive collection of more than 13,000 works of art, including American and European painting, works on paper, photography, and sculpture from the 15th through the 21st centuries; art from the ancient Mediterranean; Asian art; and Native and ancient American art. This growing collection allows The Fralin to engage in broad cultural conversations based on meaningful object-based learning and ideas.
About This Site and Our Cataloguing
A broad multi-year (2016-2020) initiative for the study of Indigenous arts of Australia and the Americas was created through a partnership between the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences and the Provost’s Office at the University of Virginia. This has enabled faculty, staff and students to use The Fralin Museum as the basis for new scholarly interpretation of the collection. It also supports an ongoing museum initiative to audit and revise cataloguing standards for the collection. The Fralin Museum applies data content standards, or controlled vocabularies and thesaurii, to insure consistency and integrity of information as well as contextual relevance with other collections and academic scholarship. Historically, some Euro-centric collections have had little or insufficient interpretation of objects representing other geographies and cultures. While we continue to apply traditional structured terminologies such as Getty Vocabularies and the Chenhall derived Nomenclature for Museum Cataloging, we are working with faculty and content experts to compensate for deficiencies or gaps in those frameworks. This is a work in progress.
In the fall of 2019, Fralin Museum pledged to focus on historically underrepresented artists in at least half of its exhibitions. In a press release, Catherine Spear, associate vice president, UVA’s Office for Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights, said “This public statement by The Fralin demonstrates its commitment as a leading and valuable partner within the University advancing our shared goals of diversity, equity and inclusion in a powerful and visible way.”
* Downloading and reproduction of images under copyright or with copyright managed by Artists Rights Society (ARS) and VAGA is prohibited by copyright laws and international conventions without the express written permission of ARS and VAGA. Copyright may be managed by the artist or artist's estate. It is the user's responsiblitity to determine copyright source.