Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

The Commonwealth of Virginia owns the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The museum, together with Virginia Historical Society, anchors the “Museum District” of Richmond.

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has divided its encyclopedic collections into several curatorial departments, which correspond its galleries as follows:

African Art
American Art
Ancient American Art
Ancient Art
Art Nouveau & Art Deco
East Asian Art
European Art
English Silver
Fabergé
South Asian
Modern & Contemporary

Virtual Tour of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Highlights Tour of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

“Sphere Within Sphere,” “Sfera con Sfera,” by Arnaldo Pomodoro

“Sphere Within Sphere,” also known as “Sfera con Sfera,” is a series of sculptures created by sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro. The sculpture depicts an enormous metal sphere with a cracked surface, revealing an intricate interior with another cracked sphere inside.

The internal layers resemble the gears or cogwheels of a machine that symbolizes the complexity of the world. The fractured cracks symbolize the fragility of our society.

Pomodoro began his series of spheres in the 1960s with Sphere no. 1 and has continued for nearly forty years designing the globe-like pieces, each depicting different maps of destruction.

Each of the outer balls is fractured, revealing an intricate interior that unveils yet another cracking orb. The design of the internal layers mimics the gears of a clock or the inner workings of a grand piano, revealing the hidden complexity.

Pomodoro created the first version for the Vatican Museum in the 1960s and later began creating similar versions for many other institutions that can now be found in choice locations all over the world.

The artist’s initial vision was that the inner ball represented the Earth, and the outer ball represented our institutions.