Jones Memorial Library commemorates 100 years

It’s all about the art at the Jones Memorial Library, the art of Lynchburg.

To begin celebrating its upcoming 100th birthday, the library has planned two lectures in advance of the June 3 anniversary. The first talk, celebrating the art of the city and its environs, is scheduled for 5 p.m. April 9.

The lecture by Lynchburg College Professor Barbara Rothermel will explore the life and works of the late Queena Stovall, considered iconic of life in Central Virginia. The painter, whose work is in a style akin to Grandma Moses, recorded scenes from everyday country life — including the faces of real people.

The lecture dovetails with a request the library made to some area artists.

For its anniversary, it asked each artist to donate a work to add to the library’s permanent collection. Those works will be displayed on a rotating basis.

“They’re mostly scenes from Lynchburg the viewer would recognize,” said Jane Bowden, a library board member.

In all, the library has received 21 paintings. Three were given posthumously.

One is of the library itself. Years ago, the late Louise Payne was asked by the board to paint a picture of the library, then in its original digs on Rivermont Avenue, to be given as a token of appreciation to longtime board member, the late Douglas Robertson.

It later went to his daughter Annie Adams Robertson Massie, herself a painter as is her daughter Anne Massie Apperson. Both have donated works of their own, as well.

A second posthumous donation comes from Donna Petty. Before her death, the Lynchburg Art Club member and several others with breast cancer helped organize a club fundraiser to combat the disease, which opened Sunday at the club.

The third posthumous donation comes from Epps Perrow. She never sold her paintings, and “for us to get one of hers is just wonderful,” Bowden said.

The library, the second oldest public one in the state, was envisioned by industrialist George Morgan Jones. Jones died before the library came into being in 1908, the result of a $50,000 grant from his wife, Mary Frances Watts Jones. She also ran the library, and did so after her own fashion, arranging books by color.

During the middle of the 20th century, the Jones changed in several ways. The library’s days of being off-limits to the city’s black residents went by the boards.

And in 1966, the Lynchburg Public Library opened. Although still run by the George M. Jones Memorial Foundation Trust, the Jones later moved out of its own building and into space it rents in the same building that houses the city library.

Instead of duplicating the city library’s mission, the Jones board decided to focus instead on history and genealogy. It is now one of the largest in the state for such research.

The Jones has become “everybody’s attic,” in Bowden’s words.

When people clean out attics and come across something of historical value, it might well end up at the Jones.

“Some of the things they find are things that must be preserved,” Bowden said. If it’s an old document, it needs the temperature and humidity-controlled environment the library can offer.

Not only do valuables receive the protection they need, they become open to public access.

“It’s not a lending library; it’s a research library,” said Bowden. “That’s one of the services I think we are so proud that we offer.”