About

VMFA on the Road is the museum’s 21st-century Artmobile, coming to you from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Beginning in February 2026, VMFA on the Road will showcase the exhibition Virginia as America: Navigating Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

This traveling art exhibition explores the American ideal that was first expressed in the Declaration of Independence. The evocative phrase "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" founded a nation on a promise of "inalienable" rights, a promise that has endured for 250 years.

From the VMFA collection, 14 works of art-paintings, prints, and decorative objects-provide an alternative lens by which to understand our past, encouraging us to consider the hopes and challenges of those founding principles and their persistent relevance for realizing a "more perfect union."

Virginia as America: Navigating Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness is organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and curated by Dr. Susan J. Rawles, VMFA's Elizabeth Locke Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts. This VMFA exhibition is in recognition of VA250, the Commonwealth of Virginia's commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, the Revolutionary War, and the Independence of the United States.