Culture
Through April 17, the Huntington Museum of Art pays homage to the Ohio River with ‘The West Virginia Chamber of Commerce Presents La Belle Riviere’
By: Emily Votaw
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Through April 17, the Huntington Museum of Art (2033 McCoy Rd, Huntington, WV) is paying homage to the mighty Ohio River with an exhibition entitled “La Belle Riviere,” presented with support from the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce. The exhibition capitalizes on the museum’s rich permanent collection to showcase the many ways in which the 981-mile long river has impacted the culture, history, and experience of those who live in our region.
Geoffrey Fleming, the Executive Director of the Huntington Museum of Art, said La Belle Riviere has provided the museum with an ideal opportunity to highlight pieces that have recently come into the museum’s collection.
“We’ve been collecting works relating to the Ohio river for many years. And this show is sort of comes out of that collecting tradition,” said Fleming. “In fact, several of the pieces in the show are works that we’ve acquired in the past five or six years, so it’s a great way to show off new acquisitions that feature such an important artery that Huntington was settled on.”
Fleming said the exhibition features pieces that remind the viewer that the Ohio River hasn’t always looked like it does today.
“If you think about the Ohio River before all the locks and dams were built on it, there were times in dry periods where you could, in some parts of the river, just sort of wade across it or ride a horse across it. And that is not what it is today,” Fleming said.
Fleming said he hopes the exhibition allows visitors to understand the Ohio River in new, appreciative ways.
“It’s a great exhibit to learn about the Ohio River in general, but also to learn about its tributaries, because there’s a lot of imagery in this show that hearkens back to the fact that the Ohio River isn’t just river its own. It has lots of other rivers that flow into it and out of it,” said Fleming. “And that’s all part of the river system which for hundreds, if not thousands or tens of thousands of years, that the people living in this region relied upon.”
The West Virginia Chamber of Commerce Presents La Belle Riviere will be on display at the Huntington Museum of Art through April 17 and open to the public for viewing on Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; on Wednesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and on Sundays from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.