Final Exhibition at Peninsula Fine Arts Center (PFAC)

Salvador Dalí (Spanish, 1904-1989), Melting Space-Time (from the Imagination and Objects of the Future series), 1975, Color lithograph. © 2020 Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Artists Rights Society  

For those of you who have missed the news, the Peninsula Fine Arts Center (PFAC) will be closing in its current capacity at the end of 2020. This means that programming, including their children’s programming, will no longer be taking place. 

In the future, a new Fine Arts Center is planning to open on the campus of Christopher Newport University, but future programming — including any children’s programming — has not been announced.

This month PFAC will be presenting their final exhibition, Masters of Surrealism: Picasso, Dalí and Miró. 

Where: Peninsula Fine Arts Center (PFAC) 

When: November 21 – December 20, 2020

Cost: (discounts for groups are available)

• Full Price Individual Adult, $7.50
• Discounted Individual Adult, $6.00 Available to Seniors 65+, Students and Teachers, AAA, Active Duty Military
• Individual Children ages 6-12, $4.00
• Individual Children under 6, Free

Description: The exhibition will feature more than 60 prints by surrealist luminaries, who sought to tap into the unconscious mind, presenting dreamlike visions in their own distinctive styles.  

In the years following World War I, the surrealist artists pushed beyond depicting the landscapes, people and objects they encountered in real life. Inspired by the research of Sigmund Freud, they instead attempted to let their unconscious minds depict new realities, or as artist André Breton described in 1924, “a surreality.” Visitors to PFAC will see works on paper by the masters of the movement, including pieces by Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Wifredo Lam and Roberto Matta.  

The idea of “surreality” permeated art across media, crossing into film, photography and even children’s literature. The collection of prints by the masters will be complemented by Surrealism in Children’s Books, an exploration of how the surrealist movement shaped children’s books. Some of the most famous illustrators in children’s literature, such as Maurice Sendak and Dr. Seuss, embraced the surrealist ideas of inventing strange creatures or creating juxtapositions of uncommon imagery. Their illustrations, along with works by Brian Pinkney and Uri Shulevitz, will be on view.  

In its Art Market Gallery dedicated to showcasing local artists, PFAC will display the contemporary surrealist works of Janice Hathaway. Hathaway creates digital collages she calls “transmorgraphs,” merging her photographs of landscapes, flowers and historical artifacts into imaginary worlds. While her works employ the modern methods of cutting, blending and painting in Photoshop, Hathaway’s finished pieces reflect Old Master approaches to composition and lighting. 

You can find out more about this upcoming, final exhibit at pfac-va.org/exhibitions