Timothy Duffy: Blue Muse, Last Day

The Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History (DMFAH) presents Timothy Duffy: Blue Muse
Exhibition Dates: June 1, 2021 - August 28, 2021
Opening Reception: Sunday June 6^th • 2:00 - 5:00pm
Gallery Space: 536 Craghead Street in the River District
Gallery Hours: Thursday | Friday | Saturday  •  Noon - 8pm   :    Sunday  •  Noon - 5pm

Using a photography process invented in the United States in the nineteenth-century, Timothy Duffy creates masterful one-of-a-kind tintype portraits of American musicians, preserving the faces of American roots music for future generations. 

“Tim Duffy’s choice of the tintype aligns with a distinctly American history of photography, while his subjects represent one of the most important legacies in the United States,” said Susan Taylor, NOMA’s Montine McDaniel Freeman Director. “His work to preserve this part of southern culture is monumentally important.” We look forward to sharing it with the city of Danville.

Featuring artists from the American South, including local New Orleans legends such as Alabama Slim, Little Freddie King, and Pat “Mother Blues” Cohen, DMFAH’s premier of Blue Muse will feature 30 of Duffy’s original unique tintypes. In order to give these underrepresented cultural figures even greater visibility, Blue Muse will also include an outdoor component in which the museum will partner with a number of local sites to install enormous images on buildings around Danville, introducing the public to these musicians.

Duffy’s tintypes are an artful extension of his other occupation, as founder and Executive Director of the Music Maker Relief Foundation, which provides support and promotion for Southern American musicians. “In making these photographs, in compelling us to pay attention, look closer, know their faces, and learn their names, Duffy has enlisted one American tradition, the tintype, in the service of securing another,” Said Russell Lord, NOMA’s Freeman Family Curator of Photographs. 

The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated book, Blue Muse, published by UNC Press and the New Orleans Museum of Art. 

Gallery Space at 536 Craghead Street in River District:

Beginning in November 2020, the 536 Craghead Street Gallery open its doors to DMFAH fine arts exhibitions in Danville’s River District, to complement the Museums regular programing at its Main Street facility. 

Rick Barker Properties has recently restored the Venable Building’s (c. 1899) commercial storefront at 536 Craghead Street. Before this space is made available for lease, it is being offered as a gallery space featuring a solo exhibition by David A. Douglas in November 2020. The DMFAH’s Craghead Street Storefront Gallery will present two fine art exhibitions in collaboration with the museum to promote the visual arts in Danville, Virginia. This collaboration is consistent with the artistic rhythm of The 500 Block, a development project focusing on the restoration of eight antique commercial buildings. 

Reverend Venable, the building’s first tenant and eventual owner, was a black minister who operated a restaurant on the ground floor and resided on the second floor. The upcoming art exhibitions will bring activity to the building, not seen in decades. 

Sponsors:

• Danville Museum of Fine Arts & History

• Rick and Kristen Barker

• The Community Foundation of the Dan River Region

• Parks and Rec (Virginia Commission for the Arts)

• Sam and Fay Kushner and Anonymous Donor Foundation

• Helen S. and Charles G. Patterson, Jr. Charitable Foundation Trust