The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA) is a unique Virginia-based organization of national stature and international impact. In service of a clear mission of providing “time and space for national and international writers, visual artists, and composers of talent and promise to bring forth their finest works, because the arts are vital, diversity is a strength, and creativity is essential,” VCCA hosts over 400 artist Fellows each year at the 400-acre Mt. San Angelo in Amherst, VA, and around 40 Fellows at le Moulin à Nef in Auvillar, France.

Mt. San Angelo was not VCCA’s first home. In the late 1960’s, Nancy Hale, a Virginia transplant and the first female reporter for the New York Times, and Elizabeth Coles Langhorne, a Charlottesville writer, were convinced of the value of artist retreats and began to look for ways to pursue the idea of an artist community in Virginia. Langhorne’s longtime friend, Edith Newcomb, graciously offered her farm, Wavertree, just outside Charlottesville, as well as financial support for the establishment of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

A Board of Directors was organized and funds were raised for the project. Betty Langhorne served as President of the first Board with William Massey Smith serving as Vice-President and Alex von Thelen as Treasurer. Edith Newcomb was the Resident Director of Wavertree. Nancy Hale and novelist Peter Taylor, along with George Kendall, the former and longtime Director of the MacDowell Colony, served as Directors. The first Fellows began arriving at Wavertree in June 1971, and VCCA operated there through the fall of 1973.

In the spring of 1974, Mrs. Rosamund Frost Lowell offered to purchase historic Prospect Hill in Louisa County and give it to VCCA over a five-year period. However, faced with financial difficulties, the limited capacity of the estate, and the stumbling blocks of renovating within historic guidelines, the Board made the decision to close VCCA at Prospect Hill in the fall of 1975.

Reluctant to give up her dream of a Virginia artist community, Betty Langhorne shared her enthusiasm with William Smart, VCCA Fellow and a professor of English at Sweet Briar College. She proposed negotiating with the College for a trial summer residency program on the College campus with the possibility of a permanent year-round retreat on Mt. San Angelo, an adjacent estate owned by Sweet Briar. Smart was enthusiastic and supportive. Accepting the position of Director of VCCA in 1975, he and Langhorne worked diligently with Sweet Briar College on a plan.

Original mansion at Mt. San Angelo

Mt. San Angelo opened to Fellows on January 1, 1978, after initial renovations to both the 13,000-square foot 1930s-era Normandy-style barn and the 1870s-era mansion. Tragically, a year and a half later the mansion burned to the ground while undergoing renovations. The Fellows moved into their studios to live and continue working. A design was begun on a new residential building with the assistance of John Owen, an architect serving on the Board, and the current Fellows Residence was completed in 1981.

Construction of the Fellows Residence at Mt. San Angelo

In 2004, VCCA acquired Le Moulin à Nef in the village of Auvillar in the Midi-Pyrénées region of France. Here, VCCA hosts around 50 artists a year — four at a time — through residencies lasting two to four weeks. VCCA also has international residency exchange programs with organizations in Austria, Germany, and Ireland. The international opportunities are available to VCCA Fellows who have had a residency in Virginia.

In June 2020, after more than forty years of renting Mt. San Angelo from Sweet Briar College, VCCA purchased the 412-acre property. Thanks in large part to a generous gift by a longtime Board member of the Georgia O’Keeffe painting Blue Sand, VCCA was able to purchase the property outright, thereby securing a permanent home.

Georgia O’Keeffe, Blue Sand