The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia

The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia is a cornerstone of cultural and academic life in Charlottesville. With a collection of nearly 14,000 objects, the museum serves as a vital resource for students, scholars, and the wider public, offering both direct engagement with artworks and digital access for research and exploration. Its study galleries—the Joanne B. Robinson Object Study Gallery and the Print Study Gallery—provide intimate spaces where faculty, students, and visitors can delve deeper into specific works and themes, linking teaching and scholarship to visual experience.

The museum’s holdings are both broad and significant, encompassing European and American paintings, photography, African and Asian art, Pre-Columbian objects, and Native American works. Rotating exhibitions drawn from the permanent collection, as well as loans from across the country, ensure that The Fralin remains a dynamic environment for discovery. Highlights include the museum’s robust collection of works on paper, which find an ideal home in the Print Study Gallery.

The museum traces its origins to 1929, when Evelyn May Bayly Tiffany’s bequest funded the creation of an art museum on Grounds, realized in a building designed by Edmund S. Campbell. Though its activities were interrupted during World War II and again in the 1960s, the museum reopened in 1974 and has steadily expanded in scope and impact. A landmark moment arrived in 2012, when Heywood and Cynthia Fralin pledged their extensive collection of American art, leading to the museum’s current name and significantly enhancing its profile.

Today, The Fralin continues to enrich the university and the community, presenting exhibitions, programs, and educational opportunities that connect people to art across cultures and time periods, while planning for future growth to meet the needs of its expanding mission.