A New Museum to Celebrate the Shenandoah Valley

WINCHESTER, VA.

:In a time when most museums expand their range by opening new wings, renovating existing space or accessioning and deaccessioning, the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley has gone all out and opened a spanking new museum. The new institution is a bold venture that heralds the distinctive arts and culture of the Shenandoah Valley.

It is housed in a splendid Michael Graves architecturally designed building that brings together under one sweeping roof the impressive collections of furniture, fine arts and decorative accessories gathered by the late preeminent collector Julian Wood Glass Jr. Mr Glass maintained homes (and collections) in Winchester, London, New York and Tulsa. His Winchester residence was the 1794 Glen Burnie house and its gardens, where generations of Wood and Glass family members lived and which he renovated as a country estate.

The Glen Burnie house sits on what was a 1,200-acre land grant awarded to James Wood in 1735 by Thomas, Sixth Lord Fairfax, to whom King Charles had entrusted some five million acres of land in what is now Virginia and West Virginia. Wood parceled off 26 half-acre lots to establish the town of Frederick Town in 1744, which by 1752 was known as Winchester.

Wood's descendents occupied the property until Mr Glass, the last descendent, died in 1992. Mr Glass was a respected collector who transformed the warm brick Georgian house into the country estate that proved a fitting setting for his exceptional American furniture and European and Old Master paintings.