Virginia as America: Navigating Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Happiness

“Virginia as America: Navigating Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” is a traveling art exhibition from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts that explores the American ideal that was first expressed in the Declaration of Independence. The evocative phrase “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” founded a nation on a promise of “inalienable” rights, a promise that has endured for 250 years.

From the VMFA collection, 14 works of art—paintings, prints, and decorative objects—provide an alternative lens by which to understand our past, encouraging us to consider the hopes and challenges of those founding principles and their persistent relevance for realizing a “more perfect union.”

The exhibition, curated by Dr. Susan J. Rawles, VMFA’s Elizabeth Locke Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts, is in recognition of VA250, the Commonwealth of Virginia’s commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, the Revolutionary War, and the Independence of the United States. (The Artmobile is wheelchair accessible.)

This event it free and open to all.