Art experts believe they have identified a new Leonardo da Vinci — in part by examining a fingerprint on the canvas.

Constance Willoughby, a senior at Monacan High School, says her interests in fashion, cars and music from the 1920s,‘40s and’50s has kept her from fitting in at school. That bothers her a little. But when she spent months last year trying to come up with a theme for her Advanced Placement photography class, that sense of not fitting in but wanting to belong became the inspiration for her assignment.

The majority of the time, we don’t know their names. They are numbers, statistics, subjects of news articles, legal documents or public-service announcements. They are the 6,848 children living in Virginia’s foster-care system. Some live with foster parents. Some reside in group homes, in therapeutic treatment facilities or in settings with “teaching parents,“ who try to model for them what family life should be like.

If you’re looking for Frances Buckalew these days, you might try the men’s bathroom just off the lobby at Spring Arbor, the assisted-living complex in Henrico County where she lives. She’s in there with her brushes, tubes of paint and a 6-foot ladder. Frances is an artist painting a mural, which explains everything. She’s also 97, which doesn’t explain anything, but it certainly makes you take notice when she starts climbing the ladder.

Fire last night destroyed the mansion and art collection of D.C. arts patron Peggy Cooper Cafritz, and firefighters battling the blaze were hindered by problems with water pressure, The Washington Post reports this morning.

For many people, yesterday was just a normal day as they strolled through the collections at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. But for the museum itself, it was the last day of normalcy for nearly a year as the galleries closed in preparation for the completion of a $150 million expansion that almost doubles the amount of gallery space.

For information on the Academy of Realist Art, go to AcademyOf Realist Art.com.
Learn about future Richmond realist workshops at ArtRichmond.com.

Copying someone else’s work isn’t cheating when the teacher tells you to do it. If you’re an artist and the work you’re copying is “Girl With a Pearl Earring” by Jan Vermeer, for example, it’s an exercise in learning. Students in an Old-Master Copy Workshop this week are using that painting and others to study the techniques of the masters with Cindy MacMillan, who studied at the Academy of Realist Art in Toronto and recently opened a U.S. branch of the school in Boston. Her Richmond workshop was organized by Mary Barbour, who studied under MacMillan at the short-lived Founders College in South Boston.

Artisan Alley, at 323 E. Broad St. in downtown Richmond, recently opened a multimedia group exhibition.  The show includes oil, pastel and watercolor paintings as well as blown-glass works, furniture, and metal and wall sculpture. Artists include Jim Lengyel, Bart Levy, Dick Levy, Maggie Willsey, Karen Ward Thompson, Kyle Lucia, Vanessa Sermández and Kristi Totoritis.

COLOMA, Calif. Facing a still uncertain economy, the world’s two leading auction houses head into their busy spring auction season with fewer artworks to sell and lower estimates than in previous years. But the picture isn’t entirely grim. Both Sotheby’s and Christie’s are featuring unusual pieces in May that haven’t been on the market for decades. And even though many wealthy collectors have been hammered by the recession, there are still plenty of investors and art museums with the resources to spend millions of dollars on art.

A home for art and the art within it are up for auction this week as a final bequest by the man who assembled them. From a 6½-foot-tall granite sculpture by Charles B. Foster to a 3¾-inch square pastel-on-paper by Shawna Spangler, the collection of William J. Fields spans a gamut of styles and materials. Fields directed that much of his collection and his home at The Prestwould condominiums be sold upon his death to benefit 1708 Gallery, the Virginia Opera Association, the Richmond Ballet, Trinity Episcopal School and others. Fields died May 21 at age 71.

In 1999, Collegiate High School senior Rachel Rosenbaum hit upon the idea of collecting pennies—6 million of them—to try to grasp the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust during World War II. Her grandfather Al Rosenbaum was, with Jay Ipson and Mark Fetter, one of the founders of the Virginia Holocaust Museum, now located in Shockoe Bottom in Richmond. His sculpture of a menorah with six eternal candles stands in the museum and is the center of the museum’s logo. Each candle represents 1 million Jewish dead.

Shelley Kincaid, author of “The Garage Sale Decorator’s Bible,“ knows how to create high-budget chic out of low-budget stuff. Here are some Kincaid projects that turn junky into funky:

• Find a big lamp, remove the socket and dismantle the electrical parts. Plop a candle on top and you have a fancy altar candle.

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is issuing a special invitation to residents of Chesterfield County to visit the museum March 18. VMFA will offer free tours that focus on art with ties to Chesterfield and Virginia, along with other highlights of VMFA’s collection. Tours at 11:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. will showcase such treasures as Fabergé imperial eggs and Edgar Degas’ bronze sculpture “The Little Dancer,“ both given to VMFA by Virginians. A portrait of Sir Thomas Dale, founder of the Citie of Henricus, will also be among the featured works.

Thirty-three Virginia art students and artists have been awarded a total of $196,000 in 2009 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowships. In the 69 years in which VMFA has presented fellowships, the museum has awarded $4 million to 1,069 professional and student artists who are permanent residents of Virginia. “The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is committed to supporting the commonwealth’s artists and art students. We are grateful to the late John Lee Pratt of Fredericksburg for establishing a VMFA endowment that makes this support possible and to others who have added funds to the endowment over the years,“ said Alex Nyerges, VMFA’s director.