Fine Art from the Collection of David B. Lawall

Saturday, March 21 at 10 am

David B. Lawall grew up in Oberlin, Ohio, where he attended Oberlin College and was introduced to the world of Art Museums by then director Ellen Johnson. He went on to write his PhD at Princeton University on the Hudson River School painter Asher Durand. Lawall joined the University of Virginia faculty in 1964, and in 1971 took on the task of resurrecting the University’s Art Museum in the Thomas H. Bayly building (now the Fralin Museum of Art). First as curator and later as director, he built the Museum’s diverse collection ranging from Mediterranean and Asian antiquities right through to the work of contemporary artists.

Lawall’s personal collecting interests were equally wide-ranging and no less driven by the academic rigor that he brought to his work as a museum director. From the late 1950s to his death in 2025, he deliberately developed collections representative of multiple artistic traditions and genres. The earliest material in his collection dated to the Neolithic and the most recent to the mid 2020s. Particularly in the case of modern artists, Lawall sought to collect works illustrative of their careers: sketches, finished works on paper, and larger projects. The result of his efforts was a vast collection of art touching all corners of the globe.