This past fall, Julia Weichlein (BA ‘22) began interning at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts under the supervision of the Permanent Collection Registrar and VCUarts Art History alumna Jennie Runnels (MA ‘16). Julia has been assisting Ms. Runnels with a project involving the Frank Raysor Collection of Alphonse Legros prints. Legros (1837-1911) was a French painter, printmaker, and sculptor who spent much of his career in Britain, becoming an important teacher in the British etching revival.
The aim of Julia’s internship has been to organize, measure, and catalog the extensive collection in order to prepare it for future exhibition.. According to Julia, “This internship has given me the opportunity to interact with art objects directly, which was a new and extremely rewarding experience for me. I’m interested in most aspects of museum work, including curation, registration, and acquisition, and through my time at the VMFA, I’ve been able to learn about all of these things.”
Julia has continued this project into the current spring semester by working on provenance research and compiling the collected information into the museum’s database. Of her continued work Julia says, “I’m very excited to continue and expand the work that I’ve been doing, with the help of Frank Raysor and the curation team of European Art. Through my time at the museum, I have learned how to adapt to new methodologies, measure and compile data efficiently, and have expanded my knowledge of print as a medium. Most of all, I have learned to appreciate the printing process, and the unique imagery this medium produces.”