Radio realism

The audio you'll hear is VMFA's 1982 award-winning radio spot for "Contemporary American Realism Since 1960." For the blog, I added video of images that were included in the exhibition.

Creativity reigned -- some might say ran amok -- in VMFA's broadcast and print advertising during the 1980s, before decisions on such things became the province of committees.

One factor we had going in our favor was that it was highly unusual at the time for Richmond cultural organizations to spend money on broadcast ads, so whatever we did automatically attracted attention. The second -- and perhaps more important -- factor was that creative decisions were being made solely by one or two people in the marketing office. No advisory group second-guessed what we were doing.

One of my favorite radio spots was for the 1982 exhibition "Contemporary American Realism Since 1960." It occurred to me that one way to relate the exhibition to our own lives was to tie what we'd lived through for the preceding 20 years -- from the JFK assassination to the Iran hostage crisis -- to what had been happening in the art world.

My journalism background figured strongly in the creative process, which was also aided by the fact that my boss gave me a budget and then left me alone. I wrote the script, picked some stock music, and worked closely with John Valentine, a creative genius in audio production and the owner of AudioImage Recording in Richmond, the studio where we produced the spot.

I enlisted the help of Virginia Museum Theatre staff to voice the audio and recorded one small bit myself. I hired Gus Travers for the "Voice of God" announcer role, and John assisted by slowing down Gus's voice track slightly to deepen his voice even further. (As far as I recall, Gus was the only voice we paid for; for years he showcased the spot on his talent reel.)

On the day we recorded the spot, John and I worked with the voice talent for about two hours to lay down their tracks. We spend six more hours editing the voices and laying down the music bed. After eight hours, John and I both thought we had 60 seconds of something good, but, frankly, we'd been working on it for so long that neither of us was sure whether the spot was really a winner or merely self-indulgent.

As the session ended, John gave me two cassette recordings and a 15-ips reel-to-reel version for on-air use. It was with great trepidation that I took the tapes back to the museum to play for my boss, who would have to sign off on the project. (I was also worried because the bill for the recording studio and Gus's talent fee was close to $1,000, the most we had ever spent at the time on production of a radio spot.)

I watched my boss's face light up as he listened to the cassette tape. Then he wanted to hear it again. He asked our secretary to listen to it. He brought in the exhibition's curator to hear it. It was a hit. My boss even urged the curator to dig into his budget to find more money for increased airplay. He readily agreed.

We had put all of our limited radio budget into two WRVA programs, Alden Aaroe's morning show and Dick Hemby's afternoon show. On the day the spot was to air for the first time, on Dick's show, everybody in our office gathered around the radio to hear the on-air debut. When the spot ended, Dick did something I've never heard done before in Richmond radio: He raved about our commercial, and then he played it again!

Later that year, the spot won an Outstanding Achievement Award at the Addys ceremony, which honored the best in broadcast and print advertising in Richmond for 1982.

The keys to the Magic Kingdom

Julie Andrews starred in a network TV special celebrating the opening of Disney World on Oct. 1, 1971. (Don Dale photo)

The TV hoopla last week about the opening of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park in Orlando reminded me of the opening of Florida's first theme park on Oct. 1, 1971.

The Harry Potter theme park publicity was not surprising. I saw much of it on the "Today" show on NBC, the network whose parent company, Universal -- surprise! -- also owns the Wizarding World. Keep in mind that "Today" is not about journalism. Come to think of it, most of TV news has little to do with journalism. But that's another matter.

My skirts, so to speak, are not so clean either. WTVR assigned me to the opening of Disney World in 1971 not because it was a story that deserved coverage in Richmond. No, it was a payoff to me from the news director. Disney and Eastern Airlines had partnered to offer news organizations a free trip to Florida for the opening. I had just finished covering a major court story that had involved a lot of overtime. To keep me happy, the station sent me on the trip: free plane tickets, free hotel at Disney World, free meals and drinks, and a lavish media preview featuring interviews with Disney star Julie Andrews ("Mary Poppins") and Roy Disney, Walt's brother, who ran the company after Walt's death in 1966.

Disney World's opening had been eagerly awaited for years. It was an open secret in the early 1960s that Walt Disney was looking east of the Mississippi to match the success of his Disneyland Park in California. By 1965, he had assembled 27,000 acres of what was mostly swampland near Orlando. He died before the swamp was drained.

The PR junket was the weekend before the public opening, a time when Julie Andrews was taping the final bits of a TV special. For me, it was a memorable vacation. The Disney company knew how to keep the media happy. The Disney secret: give them what they expect -- and more.

We wanted for nothing. I was put up in the luxurious Disney Contemporary Resort, just a short monorail ride from the Magic Kingdom. Lavish meals were provided along with briefings about the theme park and its backstage workings. (We took a tour of underground Disney World, where we found mammoth wardrobe shops, employee cafeterias, machines that made the park run and an extensive network of tunnels that allowed costumed characters to seamlessly appear in the right Magic Kingdom locations.)

Our Disney press passes were our tickets to whatever rides we wanted to try, and those same media credentials allowed us to shop free in Main Street U.S.A., Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland and Tomorrowland. By that time I was in my late 20s, but I had been raised on "The Mickey Mouse Club," so I thoroughly enjoyed roaming the park with two other reporters from Richmond. At one point I ran out of film. The Disney PR rep found out and left five rolls of film in my room -- with a request that I let her know if I needed more.

The junket culminated with a ride on a paddle-wheel riverboat through the waters of Frontierland as guests of Julie Andrews and Roy Disney, complete with dinner, drinks and fireworks at dusk.

The Disney effort paid off. Every reporter I talked to filed gushing stories about the East Coast's new must-see vacation spot -- myself included.

I'm not sure how Universal handled its media relations for the opening of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, but it would have been hard to top what the Disney people did for the opening of the Magic Kingdom.

It's a long way to Orlando, but I was so taken by Disney World that I've been back three times. And on my own dime.

Java jive

Taken in March of 2004, this photograph is of three of the people I had coffee with each morning at the museum. They are (from left) John Balasa, an extremely talented painter who specializes in faux finishes; Patricia Jagoda, who runs the museum's summer concert series, Jumpin!, as well as other special events; and Les Smith, now retired, who created and managed the museum's Web site and wrote the whole of it in code without a WYSIWYG program. (Don Dale photo)

For a quarter of a century, the VMFA staff got more work done in 30 minutes during morning coffee break than in the rest of the day's meetings, phone calls and, later in the game, e-mails.

There was a malleable rigidity to the ritual. At precisely 9:30, most of the middle chunk of the museum's staff would make the trek to the Café in the North Wing. If the weather was nice, we'd take our cups and saucers to a table in the Sculpture Garden. (The Café and the garden are gone now, demolished to make way for the new James W. and Frances G. McGlothlin Wing.)

Almost always, we'd sit with the same group of people. In the 1980s, I mostly sat with a group from the Virginia Museum Theatre. As the museum's second in line in public affairs, I was responsible for VMT publicity and advertising. The theater was in its heyday, with the number of annual ticketholders hovering above 10 thousand. As befits a theater within a fine arts museum, productions ranged from a Postmodern "Macbeth" to a new telling of the Dracula story.

The VMT coffee-break group included carpenters, painters, designers, stage technicians, front-office people and, sometimes, actors. It was at coffee break that I'd learn about new story ideas that I could successfully pitch to reporters -- from the backstage intricacies of making ghosts appear in a puff of smoke in "A Christmas Carol" to the fact that an actor in "The Fantasticks" was once a Mousketeer.

When the theater split from the museum's governance and became merely a tenant organization, I switched my allegiance to a coffee-break group made up mainly of professional staff from the education division, although we had regulars at the table who were exhibition painters, carpenters and designers.

The groups were loosely defined, and members would sometimes switch allegiance. There were rare occasions when a trustee, the museum's director or a curator might join us, but for the most part, it was the middle-managers who found time to get away from their desks for a half hour.

What we had in common was our jobs. After we'd catch up on each other's personal lives, we'd gossip about work.

Gossip can be good and bad, and a bit of both transpired in the VMFA Café. I'm happy to say that little of our time was devoted to discussing the personal lives of others. (Although there was that one time when a division head described her previous night's dream of slipping slowly down a roof towards the edge with nothing to cling to. Shortly thereafter, she left the museum, where, to be frank, she had been done in by her clumsy personality exacerbated by too much responsibility. We talked about her dream for days.)

But most of the time, the morning ritual was where we learned what was really going on at the museum. A theater set designer would talk about an ingenious method he'd devised for making a lit candle "appear" out of thin air. A backstage techie would complain about the difficulties of managing stage-fog production with the theater's air conditioning running full blast. One of the museum's education specialists would talk about her plans for leading public tours for visually disabled people or Alzheimer's patients. Or a special-events organizer would tell us about how immigration laws were making it almost impossible to book a young music group from abroad.

In that 30 minutes each morning, we heard details from each other about what was really happening at VMFA. In a disorganized fashion, yes. But in an extremely effective fashion, as well.

When the Café and Sculpture Garden were demolished to make way for the new wing, the tradition of gathering for coffee went with them. I found myself knowing less and less about what everybody else was doing on a daily basis. We lost contact with the heartbeat of the museum, its people, its problems and its successes.

Now there's a topic for an academic paper: Museum Management by Coffee Break.

That morning ritual met a valuable business objective for a quarter of a century.

Fit and fabulous

At today's fitness class, Herr Instructor seemed bent on staging a road-show version of "A Chorus Line."

One of my projects for retirement is maintaining my mobility. There's nothing wrong with my mobility, but I'd like to keep it that way.

I approached this project just as I always approach a new project: meticulously. In April, I started asking around among my friends. I was looking for some sort of class -- aerobics, yoga, whatever -- that I'd be able to take twice a week without having to turn into a gym rat.

The consensus was that I should check out the Jewish Community Center on Monument Avenue.

I called and arranged a tour. A young man from the membership department showed me around the newly expanded JCC, from the pools to the fitness center to the exercise, yoga and aerobics classrooms. We talked about membership fees, class schedules and what might work for me. I like the idea that the JCC is a non-profit. I liked the way I was treated, and I like the setup. I also liked it when everybody kept telling me I could take it at my own pace and ease into a program.

At the end of the tour, the young man offered me a one-week free pass to check out any of the activities and classes. I took the daily schedule home and spent a lot of time studying it. Then, despite the name, I settled on the Fit and Fabulous class, which is available five days a week. It was described as a 45-minute "low-impact class followed by a 15 minute stretch."

I dutifully showed up 10 minutes early on a Wednesday morning, only to discover that I was there on the one day in the month when the class was not being offered. Back to studying the schedule.

I showed up the next Tuesday, and -- surprise! -- I really enjoyed the workout. My classmates -- some of whom show up five days a week -- range in age from their 20s to their 80s. Each does what he can, and the instructor intersperses her directions with comments like, "If you can, touch your left elbow to your right knee." Some could. Some couldn't. (I'm limber; I can do that.)

Just about two hours ago, I got back home after the Fitness Class from Hell. We had a new (to me) instructor. No more kindly middle-aged woman who gave us walk-around-the-room breaks every 15 minutes. Oh, no. This new instructor was a buff, blond, borderline-sadistic enthusiast who firmly believes that pain is gain. No breaks at all. Intricate steps that tested my coordination to the max (and emphasized my weaknesses, which is altogether a good thing, mind you). Virtual dance routines, which he would lead us through one-by-one and then string together like some demented version of "A Chorus Line."

Plus, his music choices were all Rodgers and Hart, to a, rhythmic, steady beat. He seemed to want us to be backup dancers for a new musical featuring Judy and Mickey putting on a show in daddy's barn.

In the hand-weights part of the class, I usually go for the middle. They have 2-, 3- and 5-lb. hand weights. I use 3-lb. But no! After the usual routines, he told us to put both weights in one hand and repeat the exercises. All the while he's calling the moves and singing snatches of "This Can't Be Love" in 2/4 time.

At one point he said something about a mambo step. I never did get that one right. But I was good with the cha-cha step. I learned to cha-cha when I was 15, and I know all the words to Frankie Avalon's 1959 hit "Venus."

Venus, goddess of love that you are,
Surely the things I ask
Can't be too great a task.

Don't misunderstand: the infelicitously named Fit and Fabulous class is not a dance-aerobics thing. It's not so much 1-2-3-kick as it is bend-stretch-kick-grunt. The music is there in the background just to keep us moving as a coordinated unit.

At 45 minutes into today's class, when Herr Instructor told us to go get mats for floor exercises, I and about 6 others called it quits. Usually one or two older people will skip the floor exercises, but students of all ages decided they'd had enough today.

I know that I am gaining through this stuff, and I like the fact that they switch instructors randomly, but today was the hardest workout I've seen so far. I will definitely feel this tomorrow.

I hope Herr Show-Tunes isn't the instructor next Tuesday. I can wait at least a week before working out with him again.

I came home, changed out of my soggy T-shirt and shorts and took a shower. Now I think I shall sit quietly and read for about an hour before taking up any more of today's projects.

I've earned that much.

How many?

A major plot point in the film "Inglourious Basterds" develops in this bar. It hinges on how Europeans and Americans ask for "three more" in different ways.

I was way ahead of the rest of the audience in seeing the looming slaughter in a bar in the film "Inglourious Basterds." I saw it coming because once, 44 years ago in a German bar, I signaled for two beers and got three instead.

Here in America, if you want to signal a bartender to bring you two more beers, you hold up your index finger and the finger next to it - sort of like making the "peace" sign.

But in Germany, bartenders count your thumb. Our sign-language for two will get you three, and our three will get you four, and so on. It works that way in Germany even if you don't stick out your thumb. They just assume it's there.

In "Inglourious Basterds," an American masquerading as a Nazi doesn't know the difference, and his ignorance proves fatal.

(I don't recommend the film. It's riddled with violence for the sake of violence and takes too many liberties with historical fact.)

The plot turn is a case in point, the point being that travel is broadening.

My friend Walter and I are both bloggers. He's in Korea right now, and we've been chatting via e-mail about the advantages of a lifetime of travel. I challenged him to dueling essays on the subject. He went first, and what he wrote is excellent. You can see it by clicking here.

There's little I can add to Walter's superb post, but I can riff on one of his points. There's nothing quite so interesting as discovering a different way to do something. Not better, mind you. Or worse. Just different.

Europeans cross their 7s. It makes sense, because it distinguishes a 7 clearly from a 1. The also make a slight upstroke before the distinct downstroke when they write a 1. The first time you see a restaurant tab, it looks funny.

Europeans don't keep swapping their fork from hand to hand when they eat. They keep the fork firmly in their left hand and the knife in the right. It saves all those cumbersome exchanges.

Germans shake hands much more often than Americans. Franz, the film librarian at American Forces Television in Spangdahlem, used to shake hands with each of us on the staff when he arrived at work. Americans don't routinely do that. I found it to be a charming custom.

And, as Walter noted in his post, I ordered an after-dinner Drambuie in Prague one evening and got an ice-cream sundae. I never did figure that one out.

In Luxembourg, one of the more popular beers is called Funk. Delightful. (It's named for the brewer.)

In many European countries, the first floor is what we would call the second floor, and so on. That can cause some minor confusion in a hotel. Especially if you're lugging your own suitcase upstairs.

But the differences make the adventure, whether they be in eating, drinking, greeting one another, or a myriad other everyday interactions. The differences are everywhere -- and we won't even mention language and alphabets. (The British, by the way, call a Z a Zed, and a jumper is a sweater over there.)

George Bernard Shaw said, "England and America are two countries separated by a common language." Speaking of which, imagine what crossed my mind when I spotted a small tub of something called "spotted dick" in a London grocery store.

After a lifetime of travel, from South America to the Caribbean to the Azores (you might need a map for that one) and Europe, I celebrate the differences. They charge the mind and make the mundane fascinating and often enchanting.

Knowing the differences is quite practical, too. If the American character in "Inglourious Basterds" had known how to use his thumb properly to sign for more drinks in a German bar, he'd have survived to fight another day.

World Cup fever

These two children joined the many who were cheering from windows and thronging the streets in Florence in 2006 when Italy won the World Cup. (Photo (c) Don Dale)

You can't pick up a newspaper or watch TV this week without seeing coverage of the 2010 Word Cup matches in Cape Town, South Africa.

It was pure happenstance that a friend and I were traveling through Europe when the 2006 World Cup soccer games were being played in Berlin. Neither of us even knew the games were going on until we arrived in London the day before the England team won the game that put them into the final eight.

London was gripped in the throes of World Cup fever. Huge TV screens showed matches at outdoor venues. England was victorious on our second day in London, and the streets were so crowded with flag-waving and body-painted -- and tipsy -- fans that it was at times hard to make one's way. The pubs were so crowded that patrons sporting Union Jack emblems spilled out onto the sidewalks and had to be held back from the streets by police. The fun was contagious. We managed to snag a beer at one overflowing pub. Later, we waited an hour before we found seats for dinner in a raucous restaurant overflowing with celebrants.

Several days later we flew to Florence -- just in time to celebrate an Italy team victory. It was London all over again, but with an Italian twist. Men in medieval costumes, on horseback and carrying enormous banners, rode four abreast that afternoon through the crowds thronging the Piazza della Signoria near the Uffizi Gallery. We ate at an outdoor restaurant that night and watched whole families leaning too far out of ancient second- and third-story windows, cheering and waving. Their enthusiasm was infectious. (The Italy team later won the Word Cup championship for 2006.)

We were being followed by World Cup victories as we traveled.

We arrived in Amsterdam just as the Netherlands team beat Côte d'Ivoire, kicking off another outburst of national pride. At dinner that night at our hotel's enormous beer garden and restaurant, we were surrounded by fans who had watched the game on big-screen TVs and then stayed to cheer the evening away. We socialized with buoyant Dutch men and women seated near us who bought us more beers than we really wanted. But who could refuse such hospitality? Not us.

The British, the Italians and the Dutch love their "football," and their celebrations were spirited, mostly mellow and always gracious. Sure, the crowds at our every stop led to longer-than-normal waits at restaurants and made navigation through the streets sometimes hazardous. But as we were engulfed in each country's national pride, the vacation took on a deeper dimension than we had planned. I wouldn't have missed it for anything.

Wanted: another truly great director

VMFA Director Dr. R. Peter Mooz was photographed by the Richmond Times-Dispatch during his tenure as director in the late 1970s.

During my 32 years at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, I never had the chance to work for a truly great museum director. I worked for a couple of good ones, but never one who could truthfully be called remarkable.

As far as I can tell, Leslie Cheek Jr. was the only bang-up director in VMFA's history. His tenure stretched from the post-World War II era to the late 1960s. He elevated the museum from local to regional stature through a wily combination of elitism, perfectionism, timing, imagination, a dogged cultivation of potential donors, sheer determination, and his own privileged upbringing.

During his reign, the museum's holdings in European art were significantly augmented by bequests from wealthy patrons. Another crucial acquisition was the purchase of more than 150 Indian and Himalayan paintings, sculptures and decorative objects, which became the seed of a South Asian collection that now ranks among the best in the world. In 1954, he proudly opened the museum's first wing. In addition to providing badly needed gallery space, the addition included a 530-seat, state-of-the-art theatre, the first to be housed in an American fine arts museum. He pioneered VMFA's Artmobile program, sending paintings and sculpture across the state in an 18-wheeler. More important, he led the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in setting the agenda for Virginia's social and cultural aristocracy.

VMFA has not seen his likes since.

Dr. R. Peter Mooz, VMFA's fourth director, was running the museum when I was hired in 1978. He hired me when I was still "radioactive" in the world of Richmond journalism, thanks to the Byrd incident that led to my termination at WTVR TV. I was grateful to Peter for giving me a job. But the charm he radiated at first blush soon wore thin -- to me and, more significant, to the museum's board of trustees and top-level staff.

Things came to a head in the late spring of 1981. On June 10, Peter was relieved of his duties, effective immediately, during a two-hour closed-door session of the board's executive committee. I sat in on portions of the session and drafted the statement that was released to the media immediately afterward.

Controversy -- anathema to the museum's board, dominated by moneyed and politically powerful Virginians -- had dogged Peter since the beginning of his tenure in 1976. He fought with state government leaders and with his own staff. He engineered a number of controversial art purchases, including the acquisition of a George Caleb Bingham painting that had been discovered hanging on the wall of a funeral parlor in the Midwest. So much restoration work had been done to the painting that one independent art historian said it was as much the work of a conservator as of the original artist. The Times-Dispatch reported that the museum paid $225,000 (about $633,000 in today's dollars) for it.

In 1981 -- while the chief curator was out of the country on business -- Peter tried to put together a $2 million deal for six European paintings. The trustees, acting on the advice of the chief curator, blocked the deal. On June 10, while Peter was in Indianapolis at a conference of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), the trustee executive committee lowered the boom. On the table in front of each member as they met in a conference room off of the museum's lobby was a copy of the AAMD's booklet "Professional Practices in Art Museums." The booklet includes a chapter on the code of ethics for museum directors as well as information on how the firing of a museum director should be handled.

The executive committee's decision was unanimous. At 6:25 p.m., Peter ceased to be director and his tumultuous reign ended. The trustees asked me to draft a statement for the media. A half-hour later, the president of the board approved what I had written, and I released it to the reporters who had waited in the lobby.

For the next year or so, Charlie Reed, the board's president, ran the museum as chairman of a staff operations committee. Very few major initiatives were undertaken, but the mood of the museum was lightened considerably and for the time being an era of good feeling prevailed.

(The contemporaneous work of Times-Dispatch arts writer and critic Bob Merritt and News Leader arts writer Barbara Green was helpful in refreshing my memory of these events of nearly 30 years ago.)

Tour de force

The first time I ever tried to lead a tour of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, it was a disaster. The only collection I knew anything about was the Fabergé jewels. (Photos by Katherine Wetzel, (c) VMFA)

I had been at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts for three days. I was walking across the lobby after lunch one day on my way to the Café for a cup of coffee.

I heard a voice hail me from the Information desk. "Don! Don! Do you have a few minutes?"

The woman who had called my name was the wife of a museum trustee. She was standing with another woman whom I didn't recognize. The trustee's wife introduced herself to me, welcomed me to the museum's staff, said she would be sorry not to see me on TV any more, and introduced her companion.

"This is Mrs. Simcha Dinitz," she told me. "Mrs. Dinitz is the wife of the Israeli ambassador to the United States, and she's in town today as my guest. I had planned to show her around the museum, but something has come up, and I wonder if you'd be kind enough to give her a tour."

Gulp.

Trustee's wife? Israeli ambassador's wife? A tour?

I knew immediately that I was in way over my head. But I didn't see that I had any choice, so I agreed.

My tour was a disaster. The only collection that I knew anything about was the Peter Carl Fabergé jeweled objects, and that was only because I had done several stories while I was at WTVR on the stars of the collection, the five magnificent imperial eggs given to family members by Nicholas II, the last czar of Russia.

After we had spent 10 minutes or so in the Fabergé Gallery, I had exhausted my limited knowledge of the museum. Our next stop was the European galleries, where I found myself stuck after I said, "These are our European paintings."

Mrs. Dinitz, who had visited museums all over the world and had a keen interest in art, realized what was wrong right away. "You've only been here a few days, right?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am," I said.

"You don't know much about the collection yet, do you?"

"No ma'am, I don't."

"Okay, why don't I give you a tour?"

And she did.

Mrs. Dinitz didn't know our specific collections, but she knew enough about the artists whose works we owned to point out the stars as well as the lesser names and their places in art history. We spent a pleasant few hours roaming through the European, American, Medieval, and Asian galleries as she provided an excellent overview of a collection she'd never seen before.

She was completely gracious, expressing sympathy for the plight I found myself in and reassuring me that I'd soon understand why the museum I now worked for was a true gem.

After our tour, she headed off to the lobby to meet up again with her hostess. I went back to my office.

My first call as soon as I sat down behind my desk was to the museum's Tour Services office. "I need a tour of the galleries," I told the woman who answered. And I told her what had just happened.

I spent the rest of that afternoon in the galleries, taking an intense course on VMFA's art. The next day, I went back for more, this time with a different representative of the Tour Services office -- just for a change of perspective -- and when we finished, I was given a copy of a book titled "Treasures of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts."

I studied that book as diligently as any textbook I ever had in college. Next time I was asked to give a tour, I was better prepared.

Don's Top 20 tips for visiting VMFA

The current special exhibition at VMFA is "Tiffany: Color and Light." If you have $15 and you like windows and lamps made of colored glass, it's worth seeing. It's been open for a while, so the crowds now are not enormous. (Photo by Travis Fullerton, (c) VMFA)

At least a half-dozen people have asked me in the last few weeks if I have been to see the new VMFA building, which opened May 1. I retired a week before they threw the doors open, but I have been back -- twice.

You should go, too. And to make your visit more enjoyable, here are my Top 20 tips for novices who want to visit VMFA. (As you might imagine, they are NOT all endorsed by the museum.)

1: Block out some time. It'll take much longer than you think just to walk at a brisk pace through every gallery, even if you never spend time contemplating anything.

2: Keep walking until you see something you like. Then read the label. Then look at what's nearby by the same or similar artists. Do you like those things too? Why?

3: You don't have to know much to enjoy a VMFA visit. It's all about what you like, not what somebody else thinks is important. If you don't like a particular work, it's not important to you, and that's what counts.

4: If you see something you like, look at it. No, really look at it. What do you like about it. Subject? Theme? Style? Colors? What?

5: You might not like contemporary abstract art. I don't. That's okay. A lot of contemporary art strikes me as first-draft stuff. It's too much about process for my taste. Unless it's "pretty" (whatever that means), I usually skip it. When I write something, I don't pester people with my first and second and third drafts so they can see my process. As a writer, I would definitely be interested in seeing a first draft of "Hamlet." But most people are not writers. And most people are not artists. Artists, therefore, should not bore ordinary people with process. Saying "I don't get it" is more a comment on the artist than it is on you. (And this whole paragraph is more about me than about art.)

6: Don't touch the art with your greasy, sweaty fingers -- or with anything else for that matter.

7: Don't press your nose against the Plexiglas bonnets that cover small sculptures and decorative works. Do you have any idea how long it takes to clean off your nose smears?

8: Keep in mind that a lot of what you might like about the pristine, white splendor of ancient sculptures is not what the artist intended. Most were originally "polychromed." That's art-snob-speak for "painted many colors." Usually, the original paint that covered that clean white marble was gaudy. Think about what that means in terms of the way tastes change.

9: Go to the museum with a friend, so you can talk about what you're seeing. (Corollary: It's okay to talk in a normal tone of voice in a museum. It's not a church. But don't yell.)

10: Leave your umbrella at the coat-check desk. In fact, don't carry anything into the galleries with you. It makes the guards nervous. They're afraid you'll accidentally knock something over.

11: Take breaks. Eat lunch. If it's a nice day, go outside for a bit. Think about what you've just seen. When you're ready, go back inside and look for some more stuff you like.

12: Don't do it all in one day. There's too much to see. Even the permanent galleries change occasionally, so you'll probably find more stuff. And the curators are always buying something new to add to the collection. They do that four or five times a year.

13: Never go to a special exhibition that has just opened unless you want to see people more than you want to see art. It'll be too crowded. Most special shows stay for six weeks. Wait at least two weeks to let the crowds thin out. But don't wait until the last week. The crowds will thicken up again.

14: If there's a tour or an audio guide available, take advantage of it. You'll learn more that way.

15: If you like what you see in the Impressionism galleries, thank the person who invented those tubes that toothpaste comes in today. Putting paint in tubes like those made it easier for artists to paint outdoors, which the Impressionists thought was the only way to do it.

16: If you want to take an infant or toddler to the museum, that's great. Get your kids into the habit of looking at art. But if your kid starts to cry, leave the galleries immediately.

17: You can breastfeed your infant almost anyplace in the museum if you like. But don't breastfeed in the lavatory. Would you want to eat lunch in a bathroom?

18: Don't ask guards questions about art history. They know where the bathrooms are and what time the galleries close. They don't know why van Gogh cut off the lower part of his left ear lobe and gave it to a prostitute named Rachel. Stop by the library in the museum's lobby. Somebody there can answer your questions.

19: You can carry your handgun into the museum with you. Virginia law says it's okay. But don't do it. It tends to scare the other visitors. Besides, museum visitors are a rather gentle lot, so the handgun is probably just not necessary.

20: Come back again a few weeks later. See if you still like what you saw the first time. The more you see, the more your taste will develop.

Walter cited research (in a comment to this post) that cast doubt on my claim that we owe thanks to the guy who invented the toothpaste tube for making Impressionism possible. The fact seems to be that American portrait painter John Goffe Rand invented the collapsible tin tube in 1841. Colgate introduced its toothpaste in a tube similar to modern-day toothpaste tubes in the 1890s. I have reworded item 15 above, and I thank my friend Walter for his diligence, which exceeded mine.

"A good journalist becomes an instant expert on everything he writes about"

My favorite work of art from the VMFA collection is Pierre Auguste Renoir's "Pensive (La Songeuse)," an 1875 oil on paper on canvas. It's that spot of scarlet on her right shoulder that grabs and holds my attention. (Photo (c) Virginia Museum of Fine Arts)

My friend Walter, in a comment on my last post, asked me to write more about learning to appreciate art when I began to work for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

I can remember the precise moment when my art education began, and I have the museum's first chief curator, the late Pinkney Near, to thank for it.

Pinkney was a dear man, a gentleman in every sense of the word, kind, patient, passionate about his profession, and devoted to sharing his knowledge with others. He was never too busy to answer the most basic questions from a new VMFA writer who was a complete art novice.

I popped into his office one day in the spring of 1978 with one of those questions. I had run across the word "gouache" and had no clue about what it meant. "Pinkney, what's 'goo-ake,'" I asked.

Pinkney put down the catalog he was reading, smiled broadly, and explained. "It's pronounced "gwash," he said, "and it's a watercolor technique." Then he walked around his desk, linked his arm in mine, and we took the elevator one floor up to the galleries, where he pointed out examples in gouache.

In that stroll through the permanent galleries, Pinkney and I stopped to admire many works of art. He had been involved in the acquisition of most of them, and he talked about them as though they were old friends, which, to him, they were. Pinkney's answer to my simple question about a watercolor method became a two-hour introduction to art history: he talked in easily understood terms about creative methods and techniques and the magnificent sweep of art history through the ages. He told me delightful stories about the artists, the works, and how they came to be in the VMFA collection.

I can't imagine a better teacher or a finer resource than Pinkney Near.

In my early days at VMFA, when I was assigned to write about a special exhibition or a new acquisition, I did what any good journalist does: I read what was readily available and then interviewed an expert. The first exhibition I worked on was of paintings by Edgar Degas. The show was organized by VMFA staff member Richard Woodward. I knew next to nothing about Impressionism (I didn't even know how the style came to be named), so my first stop was VMFA's extensive library. With a little bit of knowledge under my belt, I then spent several hours in Richard's office interviewing him about the show and taking copious notes. If I was going to write about Degas and Impressionism, I had to understand both, and by the time I sat down to write my story, I had a pretty good grasp of what I needed to say.

As my professors used to tell me at the University of Richmond, "a good journalist becomes an instant expert on everything he writes about." I had access to VMFA's experts, and I absorbed much of what they told me.

Over the next three decades I wrote about every exhibition and acquisition at VMFA, and I learned about 5,000 years of art history, from the Early Bronze Age Cycladic sculptures of the islands of the central Aegean to the cutting-edge works being created today in Manhattan's artist lofts. I've written about European Old Masters, the funerary arts of ancient Egypt, the ritual art of sub-Saharan Africa, the tribal objects of Papua New Guinea, the sumptuous art of India and the Himalayas, the dazzling works of English silversmiths of the 18th and 19th centuries, and the decorative arts in the Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles, just to name a few highlights. It has been quite an education.

There are gaps in my knowledge, to be sure. During my years there, VMFA never mounted an exhibition devoted to the work of Michelangelo or Rembrandt, for example. But because their influences are felt even today, I picked up enough knowledge to hold my own in a conversation.

However, because of my lack of formal training, I never felt quite comfortable expressing an opinion on art history during VMFA planning meetings for special exhibitions, and when I did venture to say what I thought, I'd usually begin by saying, "I'm no expert on art history, but ..."

Until, that is, I prefaced my remarks with my stock disclaimer about 10 years ago at a meeting about a John Singer Sargent exhibition.

I was interrupted by a woman who had a degree in art history and had been a colleague for many years. "That's ridiculous!," she said. "You've been writing about art for decades, Don. You know as much about the subject as anybody sitting around this table."

The world in a new light

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts looks very different when viewed from the Boulevard today. This picture was taken after the construction of the north (1976) and south (1970) wings but before the major expansion of the building this year.

I never took an art or art-history course in high school or college.

So how did I wind up working for 32 years at an art museum?

Serendipity.

The goals of two people coincided in 1978. VMFA Director Peter Mooz wanted to accomplish two things: to increase the diversity of the museum's audience and to begin using television to tell the museum's story.

I wanted to accomplish one thing: to get a job.

VMFA is a state agency under the Department of Education. Peter was under pressure from a number of directions to add African Americans and other minorities to the museum's professional staff and to increase audience diversity. To his credit, I believe that he himself thought both were sound ideas.

On the other hand, I think his desire to begin using TV as a means to boost the number of museum visitors was a bit less eleemosynary: Peter wanted to get his face on TV talk shows and newscasts. Peter's ego needed constant attention.

My first interview was with Mike Hickey, then the museum's public relations director, who had worked for me on the University of Richmond newspaper when we were undergraduates. Next, I met with George Cruger, then the head of the communications division. My third and final interview was with Peter. If he gave the okay, the job of assistant director of public relations would be mine.

The first question Peter asked me as the four of us met in his office suite overlooking the Boulevard was, "How would you encourage more black people to come to the museum?"

I had a ready -- and obvious -- answer: Advertise with minority publications and broadcast outlets and provide programs and exhibitions that would appeal to minority audiences.

The second question was even easier: "How would you use television to beef up attendance?"

The answer was a no-brainer: Pitch story ideas and interviews to the television stations. I certainly had the contacts that would make such a task almost effortless. "The only time local TV news crews ever come to the museum is at Easter, to do a story on the Fabergé eggs," I told him. "And that's on their own initiative. Nobody from the museum -- and I mean nobody -- ever called me when I was news director at WTVR and pitched a story idea. We could aggressively book you on the local TV talk shows. We could invite reporters in to watch an exhibition being installed. We could promote interviews about programs and events. And it'll be easy, since no other local arts organization is doing anything like this. We'd have a clear playing field."

Peter liked both answers. The next day, Mike Hickey called me to ask me when I could start. I began work at the museum on April 17, 1978.

VMFA was a very laid-back place when I started to work there. You'd never know you were working for a state agency. The museum had powerful allies in the General Assembly, and proving our value and importance was not a constant necessity, as it is today. The legislature and the executive branch of Virginia's government were proud of the museum. They also liked being invited to the lavish parties the museum threw for them each year -- complete with steamship rounds of beef carved to order, silver bowls laden with shrimp, fresh oysters on the half-shell, carved-ice fountains spouting champagne, and open bars. All of this while surrounded by priceless art dating from antiquity up to today. No other state agency could compete at that level.

For the staff, the daily pace of work was hardly frenetic, unlike the world of TV news I had just left behind. There was a half-hour morning coffee break in the cafeteria, complete with Virginia ham biscuits made in VMFA's kitchen. At WTVR, I had eaten countless lunches at my desk. Nobody ever did that in those days at VMFA; we took an hour and either ate in the member's restaurant atop the North Wing, or in the cafeteria with a view of the sculpture garden and its cascading fountain, or in one of the numerous restaurants in the upper Fan District. Often, I had time to go home for lunch and let the dog out into the yard for a few minutes. In late afternoon. We took another -- albeit more informal -- coffee break. And on Friday afternoons, the communications department would depart en masse, telling our secretary we were "going to the bank." That was code for "We'll be at Chiocca's for a beer if you need us."

After a career in journalism, VMFA's slower pace seemed like heaven. We got the work done, to be sure, and collectively the staff worked hard to mount spectacular exhibitions and programs. Moreover, I began to understand that the work was meaningful and, yes, important to the life of my city and to Virginia. But there was little frenzy, and nobody ever yelled.

And I began to learn about art, and, in due course, to see the world in a different light.

What I learned while delivering the newspaper in Grover's Corners

That's me at the top of the spiral staircase backstage at the Virginia Museum Theatre in about 1957. The boy at the bottom is John Paul Jones (a memorable name), but I no longer recall the names of the two people in the middle. (VMT photo, courtesy VMFA archives)

My first experience with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, where I later spent 32 years working as a writer, was just after the museum opened its new wing housing the Virginia Museum Theatre.

As a teenager, I was fascinated by the theater. I started successfully auditioning for plays at East End Junior High School and then at Hermitage High School. While I was still at Hermitage, I read a newspaper story about the Shakespeare Players -- run by the city's recreation and parks department. They produced works by the Bard and other authors at Dogwood Dell each summer. I managed to snag small parts in "Comedy of Errors" and "Taming of the Shrew" as well as a forgettable play about Daniel Boone in which I played Daniel's son, Israel. Once I got parts at Dogwood Dell, I also began to work with the city's annual pageant on Christmas Eve at the Carillon each year. For several years I played a Roman slave. By the time I was in high school, I had moved up to playing a Roman soldier.

I was at Hermitage High when I read about a casting call in the Times-Dispatch. The just-opened Virginia Museum Theatre was producing Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," and they needed several teenagers for minor parts. On the appointed evening, I auditioned. A few days later I got a call from the theater's managing director, who told me I'd be playing a Grover's Corners newspaper boy.

I think I had a mere two lines in the play, and I've forgotten both of them.

But the important thing was the people I met. Although VMT was still a community theater in its early days -- meaning nobody got paid -- it was still several steps up from anything I'd ever done before, especially in terms of professionalism and acting talent. This was serious theater, and it was heady stuff for a shy teenager.

I'd never before worked with people I found to be so sophisticated. I learned a great deal from watching them rehearse and perform. But I learned much more about life's possibilities when we were not on stage. The adults in the cast had been places and seen and done things that I'd only dreamt about. The level of their conversation, the way it sparkled and served as entertainment as well as merely a way to exchange information, introduced me to a level of elegance and polish that was far beyond anything I'd been privy to before. I soaked it all up like a sponge. I couldn't get enough of it.

I must have been marginally acceptable in "Our Town." VMT offered me minor parts in two other productions: George Bernard's "Major Barbara" and "Lute Song," the 1946 Broadway musical.

I was one of a handful of teenagers with small parts in the three VMT casts. The adult actors were incredibly kind to us, putting up with our backstage shenanigans and tolerating our missteps as we battled our way through teenage angst and silliness. I have the greatest respect for them, some of whom remained my friends for decades.

I never acted after high school. Other interests took priority. But I learned as much or more about how to be a fully developed personality from my experience at VMT than I did in any other endeavor I undertook.