This summer, the University of Lynchburg’s Daura Museum of Art is exhibiting the work of local artists Laura Reed Howell and the late Georgia Weston Morgan. Both exhibitions are on display through Friday, July 17.
The Daura Museum is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday to Friday. Admission is free.
Morgan’s art will be displayed in Gallery I. An influential local painter who lived from 1869-1951, she was memorialized as “the Dean of Local Artists” for her lifelong dedication to creativity, education, and arts advocacy.
The Daura exhibition of Morgan’s work is a collaboration between the University of Lynchburg, Randolph College, Jones Memorial Library, and the Lynchburg Art Club, all of which have housed her art over the years.
Museum Assistant Thomas Canard ’14 curated the exhibition, which tells the story of Morgan’s life, beginning in Lynchburg in the late 19th century and moving through her time as an art student in Paris and her later work in the United States.
Brooke Marcy, director of the Daura Museum of Art, described Morgan as “a bohemian” who, as a female artist, broke many boundaries.
“Luckily for her, her father was a visionary,” Marcy said. “[He] got her an art studio, which just didn’t happen in the 19th century. Women just didn’t do that.”
When she was in her late 20s, Morgan studied under Louise Jordan Smith, founder of the art department at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College. Smith gave Morgan a scholarship to attend the Académie Julian in Paris in 1909. In Paris, Morgan studied portraiture, and one of her portraits was accepted into the Paris Salon.
“That was unheard of — for a woman artist to be accepted into the French Salon,” Marcy said.
Morgan returned from Paris to Lynchburg in 1910. Throughout her life, she continued to paint and encouraged new artists to hone their skills. She founded the Lynchburg Art Club, cofounded the Lynchburg Civic Art League, and also started the first art classes at what is now the University of Lynchburg.
“She has an absolutely fabulous exhibition record,” Marcy said. “She was in the Chicago World’s Fair, and just the fact that she was so far ahead of her time and inspired and empowered so many women artists when women artists were not empowered or inspired … she did it all.”
Gallery II will exhibit the work of Laura Reed Howell. Howell has won numerous awards in juried art competitions, and her work has been published in Art of the South magazine and “100 Plein Air Painters of the Mid Atlantic,” by Gary Pendleton.
A lifelong learner who continually explores new techniques, mediums, and subjects, Howell has painted scenes in France, Italy, the United States, and beyond.
She will give an artist talk at the Daura at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, May 22.
