Paintings by Georgia Morgan and Allen TenBusschen, art department chairs separated by nearly a century, will be on display in the University of Lynchburg’s Daura Museum of Art. The exhibitions will open on Thursday, March 12, and close on Wednesday, April 1.
An opening reception will be held from 4-6 p.m. on Thursday, March 19. TenBusschen will speak at 5 p.m. Admission is free and the public is invited.
Paintings by Morgan, who chaired Lynchburg College’s art department from 1915-45 and died in 1951, will be exhibited in the Daura’s Gallery I.
A Virginia native, Morgan attended Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, now known as Randolph College. She studied at the Académie Julian in Paris, co-founded the Lynchburg Civic Art League, and was elected to the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors.
She exhibited her work in galleries along the East Coast.
The Morgan exhibition includes work from the Daura’s permanent collection, along with items on loan from other Lynchburg institutions, such as the Lynchburg Art Club, Jones Memorial Library, and Randolph College’s Maier Museum of Art.
“We want this to be more of a community exhibition, with loans from all the places [Morgan] had relationships with during her career,” said Brooke Marcy, the Daura’s director.
TenBusschen, art department chair since 2023, will exhibit about 30 paintings — mostly still lifes — in Gallery II of the Daura Museum.
“The whole point of the show is about intentionality and observation, and so the idea was that I would create still lifes and quiet spaces using familiar objects that tell a story,” TenBusschen said.
“But I left the narrative vague enough that it would allow the audience to enter in with their own ideas. The audience’s job is to decipher the image. I have a personal narrative for each piece but wasn’t sharing them with people.”
TenBusschen, a native of Kalamazoo, Michigan, started painting as a student at Brigham Young University-Idaho, where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts. It took him eight years to complete his undergraduate degree because he insisted on taking every art class the university offered.
He said his professors finally told him, “You’ve got to leave.”
“I always tell my students I was a terrible student,” TenBusschen said. “It took me forever to get through school. It’s been a wonderful connection point with students who are struggling. For a long time, I was a little ashamed of it, but now I feel it’s a wonderful connection point.”
Before arriving at Lynchburg in 2021, TenBusschen earned a Master of Fine Arts in painting from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and taught at North Dakota’s Williston State College.
He has exhibited his artwork in New York City, Boston, and Detroit, among other places, and has received numerous awards. His upcoming show at Lynchburg is titled “Sisyphus.”
Asked why he named his exhibition for a mythological king who is condemned by the gods to roll a boulder up a mountain over and over, TenBusschen said it’s because the show is a repeat of one he had recently at Steven Francis Fine Art in downtown Lynchburg.
“Since the show is repeating, it’s a play on the task starting again back at square one,” he said. “The content and imagery remain the same, and the show is repeating.”
The Daura Museum’s hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday through Friday. The gallery is closed on weekends and University holidays. For more information, email [email protected] or call 434.544.8595.
