Arts This Week – Final Friday at The Fralin Museum
Author: Ben Larsen
Ben Larsen: You’re listening to WTJU Charlottesville. The Fralin Museum of Art is hosting their opening final Friday event of the academic year this Friday, the 27th from 5 to 7pm. For Arts This Week, we spoke with Lisa Jevack, the community relations manager for the museum.
Lisa Jevack: I’m Lisa jevak. I’m the Community Relations Manager at the Fralin Museum of Art. Final Friday is a fun event for everyone. A lot of students come out, but it’s open to the public. We have live music. There’s going to be three student bands and performers playing outside on our front Plaza. We’ll have food this final Friday, we’re going to be serving pizza. It’s all free, but supplies are limited. And then inside the museum, we’ll have some of our student docents. We’ll be giving spotlight talks, so short, 15 minute tours in our exhibitions. It is at the Fralin Museum of Art, which is at 155 rugby road, right across from the Mad Bowl. And it is the final Friday. We do it on the last Friday of the month during the academic year. The event itself is from five to seven, but the museum is open till eight o’clock every Friday. This year, It’s September and October. We take a break in November and December because of breaks, and then we’ll start back up in February, March and April will be the last ones of the 2025 year.
Ben Larsen: For those who aren’t as familiar, could you tell us more about the museum and the work that you all do?
Lisa Jevack: So we are the art museum, the comprehensive art museum of the University of Virginia, and what that means is we have a collection of over 14,000 objects, everything from ancient, pre Columbian to contemporary, 21st century. We’re an academic Museum, so that means we are there to serve the academic side of the university. It’s just serve the students. So classes come in. We’re an academic resource for research and study, but then we’re also the communities Art Museum as well, and so that’s why we like to host events and programs that serve the community as well in fun ways. There’s always ways that you can volunteer if you have time to do that, if you’re interested in becoming a docent, we have a community docent program as well. So if you like talking about art to the public, that’s a really great way to get involved. It does require more of a time commitment, because there’s training involved. But if you like learning about art and talking about art, we have that opportunity for people in the community. If you’re a student at UVA, there are lots of ways you can get involved. We again, have our student docent program. We have our student engagement Council, who they help plan the student events at the Fralin as well as they’re sort of the ambassadors of the museum for the UVA student body. And then we have an internship class as well that runs every year. We just want everyone in the community to know that, this is a space for them as well, that it’s not just a UVA resource that’s only for UVA students. So we try to do fun things like wine tastings and art talks and events like Final Friday that can bring everybody out of all ages.
Ben Larsen: The Fralin museum also hosts the writer’s eye program. Could you tell me more about that?
Lisa Jevack: The writer’s eye program, it’s an ekphrastic writing competition. And what that means is, we select a number of artworks that are on display. They are the subject for creative writing. So you come in, take a tour, or you can do a self guided tour. Select one of the works that speaks to you and write about it. So it’s poetry, prose, essay, and the age groups for the categories are elementary, so we start at third grade. During the writer’s eye season, we’ll have 1000s of school aged kids coming into the museum. Between September and November, we have a UVA Student category, and then we have an adult category as well, and then winners are selected, and there’s a prize money to win, and we’ve been doing this now I think we’re in our 39th year. It’s definitely one of our most popular programs, and our educators who run it are fantastic and our docents, and we’re actually going to have a free Creative Writing Workshop for anyone who needs a little help getting started. And that’ll be October 19.
Ben Larsen: Are there any other events coming up for the Fralin that people should be aware of?
Lisa Jevack: October 13, on a Sunday, we’re doing our foraging awe program, which is a program we started doing every quarter. So we do it with the seasons. It’s led by a local performance artist named Shandoah Goldman, and it’s about going out and walking through nature and finding something that inspires awe. Everyone gets to take two Polaroid photos of the thing that they found, and one is to keep and one is to exchange. And the whole point is that by taking a Polaroid, one, unlike doing it on your phone, you can’t see it instantly. And then two like that is the only thing you have to preserve that moment, and so it’s really about just looking and listening and being present in the moment.
Ben Larsen: All are welcome to attend the Final Friday event this Friday, from five to 7pm at the Fralin Museum of Art. Arts this week is supported by the UVA Arts Council and Piedmont Virginia Community College. PVCC Arts presents a rich array of dance music, theater and visual arts programming. Learn more at pvcc.edu You are listening to WTJU.
