Several art museums in the Hampton Roads area allow visitors to explore art history. Museums like the Muscarelle Museum of Art in Williamsburg and the Peninsula Fine Arts Center, Newport News, showcase collections that date from antiquity to the modern day. The Muscarelle Museum has an especially noted permanent collection of 17th and 18th century English and Colonial American portraits. The Chrysler Museum of Art has 35,000 objects spanning 4,000 years of art history.
Classes and demonstrations in diverse activities, from glass blowing to soil painting, take place at a number of Hampton Roads art museums focusing on both traditional and modern crafts. Courthouse Galleries Art Museum, Portsmouth, for instance, has extensive educational programs, while the Mariners' Museum in Newport News has a collection of seafaring paintings and handcrafted ship models, reflecting the area's strong maritime history.
Before the English settlers arrived, Hampton Roads had been the home of the Pamunkey Indian tribe since the Ice Age. The Pamunkey Indian Tribe Museum in King William is built to resemble their ancient houses and tells their history, but it also features art works and crafts among its artifacts, including textiles and pottery. Pamunkey women continue to handcraft pots using ancient techniques and clay dug from the Pamunkey River. You can buy examples of their wares in the museum gift shop.
Williamsburg, Jamestown and Yorktown are known as America's Historic Triangle for their abundance of living-history and art museums that highlight the history of Hampton Roads' artisans. You can watch craftsmen create works using the same techniques the English settlers used 400 years ago, and every year on the first Sunday in October the Occasion for the Arts festival welcomes more than 30,000 visitors.
