MSV to Offer FREE Admission This Saturday

MSV Day Activities Highlight CUT! Costume and the Cinema Exhibition

Winchester, VA 02/16/16…Admission to the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley (MSV) will be free during MSV Day, which takes place this Saturday, February 20, from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m.

An eagerly anticipated annual event, this year’s MSV Day is especially notable as it will offer visitors the opportunity to experience the popular CUT! Costume and the Cinema exhibition, participate in free gallery talks, view two new Art in the Halls displays, and enjoy improvisational theatre from Shenandoah Conservatory students. In addition and throughout the day, children and families may create their own costume designs on paper “mannequins.” Visitors may also enter a free drawing to win a one-year Family Membership to the MSV. Thanks to sponsor Don Beyer Volvo and Volkswagen of Winchester, Saturday’s admission and activities are free to all.

According to MSV Community Programs Coordinator Autumn Gray, along with offering free admission to all of the MSV exhibitions, the free activities at this year’s MSV Day will highlight CUT! Costume and the Cinema.

A major traveling exhibition featuring 43 costumes from period films worn by some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, CUT! is on view in the MSV only through February 28, 2016. The exhibition takes an in-depth look at the art of making costumes for period films and displays five centuries of fashion through costumes worn by such film stars as Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, Heath Ledger, Emma Thompson, Anjelica Huston, and many others. In all, more than 30 actors and 25 films are represented, including Pirates of the Caribbean, Sense and Sensibility, The New World, Gosford Park, and The Phantom of the Opera. CUT! is organized by Exhibits Development Group, USA in cooperation with Cosprop, Ltd., London, England. The MSV display is sponsored by the Alamo Drafthouse Winchester and Shenandoah Country Q102.

On MSV Day, free guided gallery tours of CUT! Costume and the Cinema will be offered at 10:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m., and 1:30 p.m.

Families interested in exploring CUT! Costume and the Cinema on their own may do so with the exhibition’s free scavenger hunt brochure (available at the Visitor Information Desk). From 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. in the Museum’s BB&T Learning Center, families may work with MSV education department staff to experiment with costume design and decorate paper “mannequins” with assorted fabrics and trim.

Also free and in the MSV Lobby at 11:15 a.m. and 12:15 p.m., Shenandoah Conservatory’s improvisational troupe, SUinterACTS, will entertain visitors with improvised stories and characters built from words provided by the audience.

In the Museum Store, visitors may enter a free drawing to win a one-year Family Membership to the MSV ($75 value).

Galleries in the 50,000-square-foot MSV tell the story of the Shenandoah Valley and display permanent collections and rotating exhibitions. In addition to CUT!, special exhibitions currently on view include Collect, Preserve, Interpret: Ten Years at the MSV, which presents some of the most important objects the MSV acquired during its first decade, and Face to Face: Portraits from the Julian Wood Glass Jr. Collection. In the Founders Gallery, Face to Face displays 35 portraits by renowned eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American and European artists. A humorous series of comic art by Paul Zdepski and 10 psychedelic paintings by Daniel Rioux are on view in two new Art in the Halls displays on the first floor of the MSV.

A regional cultural center, the MSV is located at 901 Amherst Street in Winchester, Virginia. The MSV complex includes exhibition galleries, the Glen Burnie House, and six acres of gardens. The galleries are open year-round; the house and gardens are open April through October. Admission is $10 or $8 for seniors and youth ages 13 to 18. General admission is always free to youth ages 12 and under and to MSV Members, and, thanks to generous sponsorship from Howard Shockey & Sons, Inc., it is free to all every Wednesday. Additional details are available at www.theMSV.org or by calling 540-662-1473, ext. 235. –END–

Top: Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), photo courtesy of Photofest.