Boatwright Gallery

Features local and regional fine art and history exhibitions throughout the year.

Several generations of the Boatwright family have left their mark on this community, including the Danville Museum. At the turn of the 20th century, Mr. H. Lee Boatwright was part of the triumvirate of astute businessmen, along with Mr. R. L. Dibrell and Mr. A. B. Carrington, who made Dibrell Brothers, later DIMON, Inc., famous internationally as one of the world's leading tobacco leaf dealers. The family's identity with this firm continued with his son, Mr. John G. Boatwright. His marriage just after World War I to Mary Archer Glass of Lynchburg, Virginia, secured the couple's influence in Danville and around the state. Mrs. Boatwright - a newspaper publisher with Carter Glass & Sons Publishers, founded by her father Sen. Carter Glass - was associated with many cultural, educational and business endeavors throughout the commonwealth. She and her family were active members of the Danville Museum since its founding in 1973. The Boatwrights' long interest in cultural and historic preservation was evidenced also by their careful restoration, beginning in the 1930s, of the house and gardens at Dan's Hill. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, this antebellum landmark at the western edge of the city was, for a generation, the home also to the Boatwrights' son-in-law and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Glenn B. Updike, Jr.