Museum hosts festival exhibit

June 27 – January 5, 2025 @ William King Museum of Art

William King Museum of Art hosts an exhibit featuring 75 years of Virginia Highlands Festival art and memorabilia. The exhibit opens June 27 and runs through Jan. 5.

75 years ago, Robert Porterfield began a cultural experience unparalleled to our region. The Virginia Highlands Festival has continued to grow in size and scope to become a destination for tourists and a beloved regional, cultural resource for the arts, historyand culture of Southwest Virginia.

“The Virginia Highlands Festival of the Arts and Crafts” (as it was first called) began as a dream of Robert Porterfield, who founded Barter Theatre in 1933. He joined with various organizations in Abingdon “to establish in the Highlands a center for the arts.” From its beginnings the programming was always dual: to bring arts activities and lecturers to Abingdon as well as celebrating Appalachian folk traditions.

These two workshop are provided by the Virginia Highlands Festival in conjunction with the festival exhibit, art workshops with Anna Buchanan will be located in the Red Table Room on the bottom floor of WKMA. To register for a class, do so at vahighlandsfestival.com/juried.

- Painting with Watercolor: An Approach to Cubism. Tuesday July 30from 2-4 p.m.

This class will discuss the fundamentals of art and design using watercolor techniques and go over a bit of history about abstract and cubist movements — all the while creating a masterpiece of your own!

Cost: $20 — Supplies will be provided. Open to all ages.

- How to Make a Panel: A Cost Effective Approach to Framing/ Thursday, Aug. 1, 2-4 p.m.

In this workshop, participants will learn how to create and prepare a wooden panel, thus providing the artist with a solid surface that maintains the integrity of the paper, or ground, while offering the artist a gallery quality, cost-effective alternative to framing their artwork. Whether you plan on creating your own wooden panels in the future, or purchasing them from regional suppliers, it is important that the artist knows how to properly adhere paper to panel in an archival fashion that does not damage their work.

Cost: $30 — Supplies will be provided. Open to ages high school and up.

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