As construction continues on the new McGlothlin Wing, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is reinstalling galleries and bringing artworks out of storage. Barry Shifman (right), curator for art nouveau and art deco, confers with conservationist James Heitchue about jewelry mounts for one of the exhibit cases.

Recent days have brought a variety of stories:

• On Friday Politico.com reported that President Barack Obama had dispatched a functionary to Richmond whose task was to ask Douglas Wilder to endorse Creigh Deeds for governor. The Web site described Wilder as avuncular yet non-committal. Indeed, the former governor (and former mayor) had more generous words for Republican Bob McDonnell than for his fellow Democrat. Wilder cited Sheila Johnson’s endorsement of McDonnell, for instance. Much of this sounds familiar. The timing of an endorsement, we suspect, is not propitious. If Linwood Holton’s support of the Democratic ticket rates as an expected election entertainment, then Wilder’s electoral musings also have entered the state’s political legend.

Dr. George Fischer and Eva Fischer Marx grew up with German Expressionist art on the walls of their parents’ home in Richmond’s Ginter Park before the art was considered museum-worthy. The family moved to Richmond in 1935 after saving themselves and their collection from Nazi Germany. Fischer, 83, of Chesterfield County, was born in Germany and immigrated to the United States in 1934, when he was 8.

A major family collection of German Expressionist art “so rare that it is almost indescribable” has found a permanent home at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

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.

Time is running out to view exhibitions at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The galleries will close Sunday at 5 p.m. for 10 months as construction is completed on the new James and Frances McGlothlin Wing. The grand reopening will be May 1. “People should look forward to 10 months from now, for this fabulous new museum . . . that will be nothing less than spectacular,“ said Alex Nyerges, the museum’s director.

John B. Ravenal of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has been elected president of the Association of Art Museum Curators, the organization announced yesterday. Ravenal is the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the museum, a position he has held since 1998. He will become the fourth president of the AAMC. He succeeds T.M. Shackelford of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Ravenal will serve a two-year term and remain in his VMFA job.

From free museums and free bike trails to free history tours and concerts, Virginia boasts exciting and affordable travel destinations from the Chesapeake Bay to Big Stone Gap. Some of the best include:

• Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond. The cemetery is the resting place of American presidents John Tyler and James Monroe—and Confederate President Jefferson Davis—six Virginia governors, two Supreme Court justices, 22 Confederate generals and more than 18,000 Confederate soldiers.

Debra Ruh’s muse is her daughter, Sara. Ruh, president and founder of TecAccess, was inspired to start her business in 2001 by Sara, who has Down syndrome and, at age 22, has become an outspoken, world-traveling advocate for people with disabilities. TecAccess is a Goochland County consulting and technology services firm that works with businesses and other institutions to improve the accessibility of their technologies to people with disabilities.

The expanded Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has set a date for its grand opening: May 1, 2010. However, yesterday’s announcement was tempered somewhat by the news that all of the museum’s galleries will have to be closed for more than 10 months during the final stages of construction and the reinstallation of art. “I never like to deny a visitor access,“ said Alex Nyerges, the museum’s director, in a phone interview from Los Angeles, where he was traveling with the museum’s Fabergé Society. “Ten months might seem like a long time, but it’s going to go by very quickly, and it’s going to be worth the wait.“

VMFA galleries will begin closing this month and once shuttered will remain off-limits for more than 10 months during the final stages of construction.

The Easter season is rich in symbolism, some of it deeply religious in nature, some not so much. You can look all you want, but you aren’t likely to find a reference in the Bible to a large bunny hiding brightly colored eggs in the azaleas.

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is being given its first period room. And, as befits a Richmond museum, it is a room with a past. The 1880s Aesthetic Movement bedroom belonged to Arabella Worsham Huntington, a native of Richmond who grew to become the wealthiest woman in the country. It was a few years before she became the wife of railroad magnate Collis P. Huntington that she furnished her bedroom in her Manhattan mansion, and that is the opulent room that is being given to the museum.

When the expansion at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts opens next year, the extra space will create a need for extra volunteers. Where will they come from? Why not Chesterfield County? To drive home the point, The Council of VMFA is sponsoring Chesterfield Day at the museum on March 18. “It’s such a large county. It has so many wonderful, educated people who love art,“ said Mary Ann Peppiatt, the council’s chairwoman of recruitment. “I feel it’s a rich area we could really reach out to. That’s why we’re trying Chesterfield Day first. We hope to get people excited about the expansion and the museum and getting involved.“

Air travelers landing at Richmond International Airport will go on a photographic-arts tour of America’s national parks, thanks to a new collaboration between the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Capital Region Airport Commission. “This Land is Our Land,“ an exhibition of 12 photographs by Virginia artist Hullihen Williams Moore, has gone on display at RIC and will be on view through June 15.