Portrait of a Movement: A New Approach to the Bloomsbury Group

A person sits on a wooden deck chair in a garden setting, sewing or embroidering a yellow-green fabric. They are wearing a blue outfit with an orange shawl. The scene includes a brick floor and lush greenery in the background.

June 7, 2025 - May 10, 2026

“On or about December 1910, human character changed.” Here, Virginia Woolf, with characteristic humor, refers to the pivotal moment when artist and critic Roger Fry staggered London with his two Post-Impressionist exhibitions, marking the international development of modernism. Painters, novelists, and critics associated with Fry pioneered a distinctive visual style and a shift in cultural and societal attitudes; they were known as the Bloomsbury Group.

At its core, Bloomsbury was a conversation—an artistic and intellectual dialogue that blurred the boundaries between painting and literature, criticism and creation. The Rollins Museum of Art holds an extensive collection of works by members of this collective, including Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, and Walter Richard Sickert. Portrait of a Movement: A New Approach to the Bloomsbury Group celebrates the debut of Fry’s Summer in the Garden (1911), a significant portrait of Vanessa Bell recently acquired by the museum and displayed in the United States for the first time.

Amid renewed interest in the Bloomsbury Group’s artistic production, this exhibition builds on recent scholarship and ongoing revivals to offer a more nuanced interpretation of their work and activities. Resisting narrow biographical interpretations, it instead foregrounds the exchange of ideas, illuminating the group's dynamic dialogue with European modernism, gender, domesticity, and one another.

Be sure to visit this exhibition in our Summer and Fall 2025 as well as Winter 2026 seasons as works on view will rotate between seasons.

Image: Roger Fry (British, 1866-1934) Summer in the Garden, 1911, Oil on panel, 19 x 23 1/8 in., Museum purchase from the Kenneth Curry Acquisition Fund. 2024.50. ©Roger Fry

Related Events

Vanessa Bell: The Life and Art of a Bloomsbury Radical

with Author Wendy Hitchmough
Tuesday, November 18, 2025 | 6pm | Free
Attend in-person or register to attend virtually
Exhibition Tour

June 27 & November 14, 2025 | 11am
Join Moriah Russo '13 for a guided tour of Portrait of a Movement. No reservation necessary. Admission is FREE!
Exhibition Previews

June 6 & September 12, 2025 | 5:30-7pm
Museum Members are invited to explore a season preview of exhibitions. RSVP to dmack@rolliins.edu
Arte y Café con la Curadora

8 de julio | July 8 | 6pm
Acompaña a la Dra. Gisela Carbonell, Curadora, para recorridos guiados en español. / Join Curator Dr. Gisela Carbonell for exhibition tours in Spanish.

Media and Supplemental Materials

Summer in the Garden

by Wendy Hitchmough
Read this article from Yale University Press about the Bloomsbury Group.
Modernism in Intimate Gestures: The Bloomsbury Group at Rollins Museum of Art

Dive deeper into Portrait of Movement: A New Approach to the Bloomsbury Group exhibition at Rollins Museum of Art in this Orlando Weekly article by Moriah Russo, Curatorial Assistant.
Dr. Wendy Hitchmough to Give Exclusive Lecture at Rollins Museum of Art on Vanessa Bell: The Life and Art of a Bloomsbury Radical and her Sister Virginia Woolf

Learn more about Wendy Hitchmough and her lecture about Bloomsbury Group radicals Vanessa Bell, her sister Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry among others featured in Portrait of Movement: A New Approach to the Bloomsbury Group at Rollins Museum of Art.
Sartorial Rollins Museum of Art exhibit eyes fashion sense and sensibility

by Matthew Palm, Orlando Sentinel
“The exhibit rounds up new scholarship on the Bloomsbury Group — and for good measure throws in a Picasso etching and Matisse woodblock print so you can see for yourselves how the Bloomsbury artists were following their own path.”

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