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The Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College houses an outstanding collection of American art, chiefly paintings, works on paper, and photographs dating from the 19th and 20th centuries. Located on the RC campus and open to visitors year-round, the Museum serves both the academic community and the general public.
The tradition of collecting art dates to 1907, when the senior class of Randolph-Macon Woman's College (now Randolph College) commissioned a portrait of the College's first president from William Merritt Chase. Louise Jordan Smith, the school's first professor of art, believed that the firsthand study of the art of one's time was central to a liberal arts education and she established an annual exhibition of contemporary art on campus in 1911. It was from these exhibitions--which continue today--that a permanent collection grew.
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