NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — Hampton Roads Philanthropist Joan Brock has given a hefty $34 million gift to the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk.
The gift includes 40 works of art from the Macon and Joan Brock Collection and two position endowments, including the Director of the Museum. The donation will also help the expansion of the Perry Glass Studio at the museum.
The gift from the Brock Collection, which spans nearly one hundred years of American art, from just after the Civil War to the mid-twentieth century, includes 29 paintings by artists such as John Singer Sargent, John La Farge, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, George Benjamin Luks, George Bellows, Childe Hassam, Marsden Hartley, Sally Michel, and William MacGregor Paxton.
Among the ten works on paper are two works by William Merritt Chase, two by Winslow Homer, and a watercolor by Charles Ephraim Burchfield. A glass sculpture by Debora Moore is also included.
A selection of the works will be on view in a Winter 2023-24 exhibition at the Chrysler. The works will be accompanied by the publication of a comprehensive catalogue of the collection, with essays written by the Museum’s curators and leading scholars of American art.
The directorship position will also now be known as the Macon and Joan Brock Director. Erik Neil, director of the Chrysler Museum since 2014, is the position’s first incumbent.
“I could not be happier to make this gift to the Chrysler, and to the Hampton Roads region that has been my home for most of my life,” said Brock.
“I have great esteem for the institution, its leaders and the talented team of professionals who work there. Our collection has brought us true joy and I’m hoping museum visitors will be inspired as we have by these great artists.”
Brock is a longstanding Chrysler Museum supporter. She was the first woman to preside over the Chrysler Museum Board, and she served as a museum docent among many other volunteer efforts at the Museum.
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