NORFOLK, Va. - A new art exhibit debuting this week honors the gift that turned Norfolk into a major player in the art world.
Building a Legacy: Chrysler Collects for the Future opens Friday inside the Chrysler Museum of Art.
The exhibition comes as the museum celebrates the 50th anniversary of automotive heir Walter P. Chrysler Jr. moving his massive art collection from Massachusetts to his wife's hometown of Norfolk.
As a result, what was originally called the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences was renamed.
"Even now we're making sure that we peg ourselves to the level that Chrysler set us at," said Lloyd DeWitt, Chief Curator for the Chrysler Museum of Art.
The new exhibition, DeWitt tells News 3, aims to build on the Chrysler's legacy, showcasing "recent and promised" gifts from art collectors, many of whom, he says, are local.
"We're so overwhelmed by the generosity but also more by the thoughtfulness because the kinds of gifts that we're getting really fit the future mission of the museum to talk about social issues, to talk about things that we're all concerned about," said DeWitt.
Building a Legacy: Chrysler Collects for the Future is set to run until March 6, 2022. Admission is free.
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