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Homeschool Days: 2025-2026

 

Victorian England: Through the Looking Glass

Join us for an exploration of Victorian England—a golden age of dazzling personalities, painting styles, and techniques! Students (ages 5-14) will discover how Victorian artists shaped not only their world but our own. Each 75-minute lesson is interactive and includes a related art activity. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to learn and create. As Alice in Lewis Carroll’s classic says: “What is the good of a book (or a world) without pictures?

Parent attendance is optional. Review our FAQs, which cover arrival and even co-op questions.

Registration: Register HERE.

Location: Mack Building (on the campus of Bob Jones University)

Fees per Lesson: Children–$10; adults–$3

Further your exploration of the era at home through M&G’s FREE electronic activity resource sheets HERE.

Event fees are non-refundable. Adults may choose either to attend with their child(ren) or leave after student check-in for the 75-minute lesson.

 

Elementary School Lessons (K5-5th grade)

Thursday at 9:30AM and 2PM (October Thursday sessions are FULL)

Friday at 9:30AM, Noon, and 2PM (All Friday sessions are FULL)

Middle School Lessons (6th-8th grade)

Friday at 9:30AM, Noon, and 2PM (ALL 9:30am sessions are FULL; September and October 2:00PM sessions are FULL; November 12PM session is FULL)

 

Fall Topics:

September 11-12, 2025

Discovering Who’s Who: Portrait Painting

  • Franz Xaver Winterhalter: Family Portraits
  • William Powell Frith and John Collier: Individual Portraits
  • Augustus Mulready, William MacDuff, and Mary Gow: Children’s Portraits

October 9-10, 2025

Sharing Stories: Children’s Book Illustrators

  • John Tenniel: Illustrator for Lewis Carroll
  • Beatrix Potter: Anthropomorphic Storyteller
  • Randolph Caldecott: Inspiration for the Caldecott Medal
  • Arthur Rackham: Innovative Ink and Watercolor Artist

November 13-14, 2025

Furry Friends and Fearsome Beasts: Animal Painters

  • Edwin Landseer: Favorite of the Queen
  • Charles Burton Barber: Master of the Sentimental
  • Briton Riviere: Master of the Majestic

Spring Topics:

Registration for Spring semester will open in December.

February 12-13, 2026

Enjoying a Laugh: Caricatures and Limericks

  • Henry Furniss: The Art of Exaggeration
  • Leslie Ward: The “Spy” of Vanity Fair
  • Edward Lear: Painter, Poet, Humorist

March 12-13, 2026

Discovering Nature: Landscape and Still Life Paintings

  • Thomas Creswick and John Crimshaw: A Distant View
  • William Henry Hunt and Edward Ladell: A Closer Look

April 9-10, 2026

The Imaginative World: Prominent Women Artists

  • Kate Bunce and Marie Spartali: The Enchanted World
  • Emily Osbourne and Emma Brownlow: The Nameless and Friendless
  • Adalaide Claxton: Invention and Imagination

 

Homeschool Days is part of Arts Encounter, M&G’s K-12 arts programming.

Explore the Collection

Old Master paintings can be overwhelming sometimes with their detailed beauty, serious palette, and historical roots. But they don’t have to be, which is why M&G created the EXPLORE pages—a diversion on our website to unfold some of the mystery and meaning in the art of the past. Watch, listen, read, and color your way through the world of Old Masters!

Click on the links below to investigate for yourself:

 

Object of the Month: September 2025
M&G Objects on Loan
Collection on View
Scavenger Hunts
A Closer Look
History in Pictures
M&G Coloring Pages
Think on These Things
Watch This!
ArtBreak: Past Series
M&G Kids
The Collection

Object of the Month: July 2025

Procession to Calvary

Oil on Panel

Otto van Veen

Flemish, c. 1556–d. 1629

 

Otto van Veen was a classically trained humanist artist or pictor doctus, a concept created by the ancient writer Horace in his Ars Poetica signifying the attempt by artists to regain the social standing of the ancients. Otto van Veen succeeded. A renowned court painter to several rulers, he led the Antwerp art scene, diminishing only when his pupil Peter Paul Rubens returned from his travels in 1608. He paid tribute to Horace by creating two series of emblematic art which coupled Horatian proverbs with an illustrative image. A Romanist painter, he continued the traditions of the church through his work, including this one in M&G’s collection.

Using the usual cast of characters—Roman soldiers, weeping women, Simon of Cyrene, and a jeering mob—van Veen pictures the procession to Calvary just outside the city gate. A woman in the foreground holds up a piece of cloth to Christ who has stumbled under the cross and brought the procession to a momentary halt. St. Veronica offers her veil to Christ to wipe his brow. Traditionally, He accepts her kindness and a likeness of His face appears on the veil when it is returned to her. Scholars debate whether the woman is named Veronica or that the replication of Christ’s “true image”—vera icon—contributed to her name. She is part of a trio of women; the others have children with them, which reminds the viewer that Christ welcomed little children to come to Him. Just slightly behind these women are Mary with clasped hands in her usual blue robe and John, already attentive to her wellbeing.

Van Veen visually divides the scene with the positioning of the cross. On one side is the sympathetic crowd; on the other is the iron hand of Rome. The right side of the panel draws the viewer’s eye to the white horse ridden by a Roman soldier and the muscular figure pulling Christ up the hill with a rope. The dress of this man and the man behind the cross who whips Simon and Christ indicates that they are not part of the military structure of Rome. Instead, they seem to be commoners employed by Rome for the occasion. Combining this fact with the intense, backward gaze of the prominent soldier on horseback creates a personal interaction between the viewer and the scene. The sinfulness of every man compels an atonement be made for a restoration of relationship with God. In the foreground, the open area at this stopping point on the way to Golgotha provides room for the viewer to be included in the picture’s events and to consider which “side” of the scene he will be part of: sympathetic or condemnatory.

 

Dr. Karen Rowe Jones, M&G board member

 

Published 2025

Additional Resources:

For additional information on an etching by N. Muxel made after Otto van Veen’s Procession click here.

To see an image of Otto van Veen’s Christ Meeting St. Veronica from the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium click here.

 

 

Pietro Alemanno

Madonna and Child with Saints

Pietro Alemanno

Below the image, click play to listen.

 

The Triumph of Miriam: Luca Giordano

Luca Giordano, a child prodigy, would become one of the Baroque era’s most noted Neapolitan artist.  M&G has at least three of his works including The Triumph of Miriam.

Artful Giving: How to Give

The Museum & Gallery is a non-profit organization that depends on the financial support of individuals, businesses, and foundations. Your tax-deductible contribution helps M&G to continue transforming lives through our European Old Master Collection and outreach programs for students of all ages!

We’ve added this page to help you consider some of the most popular ways to give to M&G. You can learn about strategies for giving today and strategies for giving in the future. We’ve even included a few once-in-a lifetime strategies. Just click on the arrows below for further information.

We welcome the opportunity to equip you with additional information about any of these giving methods and to discuss with you the best strategies for you to consider. We’re also available to connect with your personal legal, tax and investment professionals. Contact us at  contact@museumandgallery.org or 864-770-1331.

Giving Today

 

Giving Cash

Cash giving is your quickest and easiest way to invest in M&G’s mission of transforming lives through fine art. If you itemize rather than take the standard deduction on your federal income taxes, you can deduct cash gifts up to 60% of your adjusted gross income through 2025 and 50% thereafter. In fact, gifts of cash are one of the surest ways to make your itemized deductions exceed your standard deduction.

  • Giving by check: make your check payable to Museum & Gallery, Inc. and mail to:
    • Museum & Gallery, Inc.
      1700 Wade Hampton Blvd.
      Greenville, SC 29614
  • Giving online by debit card or credit card: please click here to use our secure form.
  • Giving by phone: please call (864) 770-1331
  • Giving by wire: please contact us for instructions at (864) 770-1331 or contact@museumandgallery.org.

Giving from Your Donor Advised Fund

If you have a donor-advised fund at the National Christian Foundation, South Carolina Christian Foundation, your local community foundation, or you utilize a gift fund with Fidelity, Vanguard, Schwab, or other investment firm, you can suggest gifts be made from your fund to M&G. Be sure to instruct the foundation or fund to share your identity with us so that we can thank you for your gift.

Giving from Your Investment Portfolio

When you give shares of appreciated stock, mutual funds, or bonds you’ve owned longer than 1 year directly to M&G, you make an easy, lower-cost, tax-effective gift.

Gifts from investments that have grown allow you:

  • To make a generous gift today and not impact your cashflow from your other sources of income;
  • To reduce the built-in capital gains tax bill that will eventually come with a portfolio increasing in value.

Plus, if you itemize, you’ll likely increase your deductions and pay less income tax. Your deduction amount would be for the value of the stock on the day the gift is received and not on the price you paid for it. You can deduct the value of the stock gift up to 30% of your adjusted gross income.

For gift of stock instructions, please contact us at (864) 770-1331 or contact@museumandgallery.org.

Giving through Your Employer’s Matching Gift Program

Your employer may offer a matching gift program to double the impact of your gift. To find out if your company has a matching gift policy, please contact your Human Resource department. If your gift is eligible, request a matching gift form from your employer, and send it completed and signed with your gift to M&G. We will do the rest!

Giving from Your IRA Now (QCDs)

If you are age 70½ or better, your traditional IRA may be the best source for your annual or special project giving.

Qualified Charitable Distributions—QCDs—allow you to give funds from your IRA directly to M&G. For 2024, you can give up to $105,000, and the gift counts toward your required minimum distributions which take effect once you reach age 72 (73 if you reach age 72 after Dec. 31, 2022).

This strategy could be a benefit if you would rather make a generous gift today than recognize the taxable income from some or all of your IRA distribution once you’re required to take distributions. For Planning Tips and simple instructions, download our QCD tip-sheet.

 

Giving in the Future

 

Giving through Your Will or Trust

You can give to M&G through your will or trust and know that you will be transforming lives through fine art for years to come. These gifts—known as bequests—are a great way to memorialize your legacy of giving to M&G or make a major gift without impacting your current cash flow or available assets.

Through your will or trust, you can give:

  • A specific amount or a specific asset,
  • A percentage of your estate (the most common!), or
  • What’s left of your estate after gifts to other beneficiaries.

Additionally, your gift can be contingent on your spouse or other beneficiaries predeceasing you.

Giving through Your Life Insurance

The simplest way to give using a life insurance policy is to name M&G as a beneficiary of the policy. You can use the policy to benefit loved ones and M&G, M&G if your loved ones predecease you, or M&G exclusively.

You can also transfer ownership of the policy to M&G. If it’s permanent insurance, we can liquidate the policy and put the cash value to immediate use, or you can continue paying the premiums on the policy to M&G. The paying of the premiums to M&G create additional charitable deductions.

Giving through Your Retirement Plan or IRA

With a simple beneficiary designation form provided by your plan administrator, you can name M&G as a contingent, partial, or exclusive beneficiary of your unused retirement plan or IRA balance. This is a great way to make a significant gift in the future without impacting investment growth before retirement or cashflow during retirement.

If your retirement assets are funded pre-tax—like a traditional IRA or 401(k)—your loved ones will pay income tax on distributions to them at their tax rate. M&G will benefit from the total of any distribution without any tax reduction in the value of your gift. Additionally, naming M&G as a beneficiary may generate estate tax savings.

When making a future gift by beneficiary designation, please include the following information to ensure your gift is realized:

  • Museum & Gallery, Inc.
    1700 Wade Hampton Blvd.
    Greenville, SC 29614
  • M&G’s EIN: 57-0956189

The Museum & Gallery Legacy Society – We Want to Celebrate You!

If you have included a gift for M&G in your will or trust or by other beneficiary designation, please let us know. We would like to thank you and celebrate your gift. We can also prepare in advance to honor your wishes and preserve your legacy until Christ returns.

The memory of the righteous is a blessing.

Proverbs 10:7

 

Once-in-a Lifetime Legacy Opportunities

 

Giving Your Real Estate

Your primary residence, vacation home, vacant land, or commercial property are all assets that you could give M&G. If not for M&G’s own real estate needs, the property can be sold by M&G and the proceeds put to work in programming, art acquisition, or added to the endowment.

  • Giving it Now: Real estate given during your lifetime can generate a significant charitable income tax deduction based on the fair market value of the real estate. Plus, you avoid paying capital gains tax on the sale of the property.
  • Giving it Later:  You can give your real estate to M&G after you’re done enjoying it either:
    • Through your will or trust, or
    • By transferring it now but keeping a life estate for your lifetime.

Giving of Your Business

If you’re an entrepreneur, whenever you first think about selling your business or are planning the transfer of your business to your children or partners, you have an opportunity to make a generous gift to M&G. You can often generate a significant charitable income tax deduction and reduce your capital gains tax.

Planning Tip: If you would like to explore making a gift for the sale of your business, the ownership interest or shares in your business must be transferred to M&G before you have a contract for sale of your business. Be sure to consult with your legal and tax advisors early.

 

 

 

We’re Here for You

If you have any questions or want to explore your personal options, please contact us at contact@museumandgallery.org or 864-770-1331.

 

Where we choose to store our treasures depends largely on where we think our home is.

Randy Alcorn

Christ Teaching on the Mountain: Pieter Jan van Reysschoot

Flemish artist Pieter Jan van Reysschoot masterfully illustrates Christ’s use of creation to teach the multitudes about God’s compassionate character.

Master of Riofrio

Old Testament Characters: The Prophet Balaam; David, King and Prophet; Solomon, King and Prophet; The Prophet Zechariah

Master of Riofrio

Below the image, click play to listen.

 

Object of the Month: June 2025

St. Anthony of Padua

Oil on Canvas, 1658

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Il Guercino

Cento, 1591–1666

Long before social media, opinions were influential. And, in art history, opinions have affected perspectives toward artists and their work for entire generations. One example of this is the brilliant philosopher of the Victorian era, John Ruskin, who was an art critic that championed JMW Turner, Britain’s greatest landscape painter. Ruskin preferred and praised the contemporary artists of his day such as Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites, the art prior to Raphael, and the Gothic style.

In contrast, Ruskin’s opinion about the Italian Baroque period can essentially be summed up by his reaction to one painting in the Brera Gallery in Milan by Guercino, “partly despicable, partly disgusting, partly ridiculous” (Ruskin, p.203). He classified many of the great seventeenth-century painters within what he labeled “the School of Errors and Vices” (Ruskin, pp.144-45). Such strong views influenced the collecting habits of collectors and museums in Europe and America for several decades. Consequently, Baroque artists are still recovering from the stigma; their names are not as well-known as the Renaissance masters even though their skill is of equal quality.

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Il Guercino was one of the most important and talented painters of the Italian Baroque period. He hails from the region of Emilia-Romagna, born in the small town of Cento, which is close in proximity to the artistic centers in Ferrara and Bologna. He was largely self-taught (influenced by works of Ludovico Carracci and Caravaggio), although he studied with local artists Paolo Zagnani and Benedetto Gennari.

Guercino’s nickname means squint-eyed or cross-eyed possibly due to an eye condition, yet this disability didn’t seem to affect his work. Ludovico Carracci praised him in Bologna, and his “genius was recognized by the Bolognese canon Padre Antonio Mirandola, who became his earliest protector and obtained the artist’s first Bolognese commission in 1613” which established his career. “He was then patronized by the papal legate to Ferrara, Cardinal Jacopo Serra,” Duke of Mantua Ferdinando Gonzaga, and the Bolognese cardinal Alessandro Ludovisi, who later become Pope Gregory XV— summoning Guercino to Rome in 1621 (de Grazia, p.157).

Guercino study of St. Anthony of Padua from Glasgow Museums

Following the pope’s death in 1623, Guercino returned home to Cento to work, painting a wide range of subjects and drawing countless distinctive studies in red chalk and ink. As an artist, he was truly inventive, a real creative. He would put his ideas to paper very quickly and spontaneously—something his biographer Malvasia described as guizzanti, meaning “dart with a flick of a tail, as fishes” (Brooks, p.12).

Among other requests, he was asked to become official painter to the courts of England (1626) and France (1629 and 1639). After the death of his archrival Guido Reni in 1642 he moved his studio to Bologna. By the 1650s, his European patronage had tapered to more local commissions, which is when M&G’s painting was made.

St. Anthony of Padua features the thirteenth-century Doctor of the Church, who was born in Lisbon. He joined the Franciscan Order (represented by the dark brown robe and tonsure haircut) and became a close friend and follower of Francis of Assisi. He had a vast knowledge of scripture and was a gifted preacher, serving in France and Italy including Bologna and Padua, where he died. After his death, he was made the patron saint of Padua.

In art, Anthony is depicted in various scenes describing events from his life. M&G’s subject is the vision of the Virgin and infant Christ—a common theme during the Counter Reformation. The vision came while Anthony was in his room, and he is portrayed with a book (which identifies his learning), lilies (representing his purity), and a crucifix (in the shadows above the lilies).

At the time of acquisition in 1973, M&G’s founder knew that this painting was referenced in the artist’s account books—it was one of two St. Anthony altarpieces recorded. The great Guercino and Baroque specialist, Sir Denis Mahon wrote Dr. Bob, “I have no doubt whatsoever from studying the painting itself that it is an authentic late work by Guercino…. It was the lower half of a picture which had been very much bigger…. It follows that the picture is likely to have originally been a full-size altarpiece” (M&G files).

In the 1990s, Richard Townsend found that of the two St. Anthony altarpieces referenced in Guercino’s account books, one was still in Verona and the other cut in two and sold. This work remained a mystery, until recent years when Italian art historian Enrico Ghetti pieced together the history based on the confusing details in Guercino’s Book of Accounts and Malvasia’s biography. M&G’s painting was once called the Madonna and Child with Saint Anthony of Padua and paid for in 1658 by Pier Luigi Peccana (from Verona) most likely on behalf of the Marquis Gaspare Gherardini. The altarpiece used to hang in the Chapel of Saint Antony at the Capuchin church of Verona.

Ghetti Reconstruction

Ghetti suggested the painting, Madonna with Child, which was formerly in the Sgarbi collection in Italy is most likely the upper portion of our work; he has proposed a reconstruction of the dismembered altarpiece as seen here.

M&G’s painting reveals some of the standard matters art historians encounter regularly: the influence of art critics like John Ruskin, the connoisseurship of art specialists like Sir Denis Mahon, dismembered altarpieces, and confusing primary records for art scholars like Enrico Ghetti to ferret out. More importantly, this interesting work represents one of the most notable and innovative Italian painters of the seventeenth century.

 

 

 

Erin R. Jones, Executive Director

 

Bibliography

Brooks, Julian. “Characterizing Guercino’s Draftsmanship.” Guercino: Mind to Paper. Getty Publications: Los Angeles, 2006.

De Grazia, Diane. “Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, Called Il Guercino.” Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington: New York, 1996.

Ghetti, Enrico. 2020. “La ricostruzione di una pala del Guercino: la Madonna col Bambino e sant’Antonio d Padova per i Cappuccini di Verona,” Storia dell’ Arte 153, Nuova Serie 1.

Ruskin, John. Modern Painters (vol. ii), ed. Edward T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn. George Allen: London, 1903.

Ruskin, John. Ruskin in Italy: Letters to His Parents, 1845, ed Harold I. Shapiro. Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1972.

 

Published 2025

Eyre Crowe: Wittenberg, October 31, 1517

Victorian artist, Eyre Crowe does a masterful job of recreating that moment in the town of Wittenberg, Germany that set in motion the Protestant Reformation.