Image: Denis Juneau. Courtesy Galerie Simon Blais, Montréal.
The Virginia Watercolor Society’s 47th annual exhibition will open September 5 at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, bringing approximately 100 selected works to the museum’s 21st-Century Art Gallery through November 1, 2026. Admission to the exhibition will be free.
The presentation will feature works submitted by members of the Virginia Watercolor Society, described by VMFA as the Commonwealth’s oldest statewide organization devoted to watercolor. Although all the selected works use watercolor or water-based media on paper, the exhibition encompasses painting, mixed media and collage. The works range in style from realism to abstraction and address subjects including portraiture, landscape and still life.
VMFA’s Dr. Christopher Oliver, Associate Curator of American Art, served as juror for this year’s selection process. The exhibition page identifies the display as the society’s 47th annual exhibition and presents it as a survey of current work by artists working across Virginia, without specifying the number of artists represented or listing individual participants.
The exhibition will also include a public voting component. Visitors can cast ballots for a People’s Choice Award using a ballot box in the 21st-Century Art Gallery during the exhibition’s run. Watercolorist Mary Whyte will present awards of merit to selected works, though the available exhibition information does not give further details about the award categories or presentation date.
The show will be the final display in VMFA’s 21st-Century Art Gallery before the space temporarily closes in preparation for the museum’s expansion and renovation project. The museum is presenting the exhibition alongside ‘Painted on Paper: American Watercolors from the Permanent Collection,’ an installation of 15 watercolors drawn from VMFA’s collection and on view in the Mary Ann Frable Works on Paper Gallery from August 15, 2026, through February 15, 2027.
‘Painted on Paper’ includes many recent acquisitions, as well as works that had not been shown at VMFA this century. Its presentation provides institutional context for the society exhibition: VMFA notes that while watercolor was long used as a preparatory medium for works in other materials, American artists, critics and patrons increasingly recognized it as a fine art in its own right during the mid-19th century. The collection installation is curated by Dr. Christopher C. Oliver, Bev Perdue Jennings Associate Curator of American Art.
The ‘47th Annual Exhibition of the Virginia Watercolor Society’ will be on view in the 21st-Century Art Gallery at VMFA, 200 N Arthur Ashe Boulevard, Richmond, from September 5 through November 1, 2026. VMFA is open 365 days a year, and general admission is free.
