A portrait of Robert Boyle arrived in 1732, the first gift in a collection that now fills the Muscarelle Museum of Art in Williamsburg. While the Museum only dates to 1983, the university art collection itself reaches back much farther: its very first gift was a portrait of the physicist Robert Boyle in 1732. Much of the early collecting reflects the college’s ties to the history of the institution and the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Portraiture formed the foundation of that early collection, and you’ll hear names tied to many First Families of Virginia—sitters from the Page, Bolling, and Randolph families are part of that legacy. Decades later, a major work arrived: White Flower by Georgia O’Keeffe, given to William & Mary in 1938 by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. That painting had indiscriminately “decorated” various campus walls until it was re-discovered by President Thomas Ashley Graves Jr. in the 1970s, when he asked Miles Chappell from the department of art and art history to inventory the holdings.
That inventory revealed the immensity and importance of the collection and the need for a university museum. Notice the museum and the campus that helped uncover this remarkable collection.