VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS & The R. E. Lee Camp No. 1 Confederate Veterans. Some Background History. The VMFA was built because of several different reasons, which had more to deal with a particular project of Virginia Governor Pollard, who was a devotee of the Virginia Arts Association in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Governor Pollard wanted to use the Soldiers Home grounds to build a Museum to house the famed Art Collection of Col. Barton Payne, who had donated his collection to the Commonwealth of Virginia. For 12 years the Barton Payne Collection was housed in the Battle Abbey on the Boulevard in Richmond, at one end of the grounds of the Soldiers Home, and today that footprint occupied by the Virginia Historical Society, which merged with the Battle Abbey in 1946. The Battle Abbey had been a 20 Year Nationwide Project for a Confederate Museum of the South, and the beginning of the Project started by Charles Broadway Rouss, of Mosbys Rangers, who made it big in retail on Broadway in New York. The Battle Abbey project began by Rouss Offering $100,000 if Southern Citizens could raise a Matching Amount. The Major Cities of the South Competed to have the Museum Placed in their Community, and 20 Long Years needed in an Economically Devastated South to Raise the matching $100,000 for the Confederate Memorial Institute (Battle Abbey). The R. E. Lee Camp was responsible for the Battle Abbey to come to Richmond, and to have the Battle Abbey of the South placed on the grounds of the Soldiers Home. Members of the R. E. Lee Camp voted to donate 6.8 acres of land to the Confederate Memorial Institute (Battle Abbey) in 1910, and that approval by the Lee Camp recorded in the ACTS of 1910 of the Virginia General Assembly. That Dream was completed in 1921 as the Hoffbauer famed 4 Seasons of the Confederacy Painting was completed, and the Battle Abbey was Finished. As I mentioned above, the Barton-Payne Art Collection was housed in the R. E. Lee Camp No. 1 C.V. Gallery at the Battle Abbey for 12 Years, but Governor Pollard wanted a Separate Museum to House the Barton-Payne Collection. SO - Governor Pollard tried to by Executive Order Appropriate Land of the R. E. Lee Camp Soldiers Home. The Attorney General of Virginia Wrote a Declarative Opinion that the Governors Executive Order was Illegal, and the Governor Needed an Executive Approval of the R. E. Lee Camp No. 1 C.V., before Land from the Soldiers Home could be Used. The Governor went to the Lee Camp, it is said - On Bended Knee, to Beg for Land for the Virginia Arts Commission. The GOVERNOR Had to Guarantee that an ACT of the General Assembly would Provide that the Grounds of the Soldiers Home would be Used in Perpetuity as a R. E. Lee Camp Confederate Memorial Park, and with Conditions and Provisions - Allow the Virginia Arts Association to build a Museum on the Grounds of the Soldiers Home, IF - the Grounds would Forever be a Memory to Confederate Veterans of the War and the Soldiers who had lived at the Home. SO - In 1933 by the ACTS Of the Commonwealth of Virginia, there were Two Commissions Formed (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts - VMFA) and R. E. Lee Camp Memorial Park, with Boards, Regulations, and Provisions to Govern Both. One of the Provisions of the VMFA was that the Museum Should Display Confederate Exhibits . MODERN DAY - The VMFA Has Gobbled Up Almost All of the Grounds of the R. E. Lee Camp Confederate Memorial Park and the Display on the Grounds of the Old Soldiers Home is of Modernistic and Absurd Design, Completely Unrelated and Incongruent to the Purpose of the Original ACTS of the General Assembly in the 1933 Legislation. VMFAs acknowledgement of the R. E. Lee Camp Confederate Memorial Park is the Historical Marker Placed here in 1954, when the Museum Gobbled up grounds, and almost Tore down the Confederate Memorial Chapel - Before the Outrage of the Community, and Ladies from the U.D.C. going to the General Assembly of Virginia - Waving Confederate Flags to keep the Chapel from being torn down. The U.D.C. & S.C.V. then came together, along with the Commonwealth of Virginia to SAVE the Chapel with a Restoration with was finished by 1960.
Posted on: Thu, 17 Jul 2014 12:22:31 +0000
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