"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."