Celebrating our 40th Anniversary

Visitors at a Scholastic Art Awards Reception at FACNRV

If we could climb into a way-back machine and set the controls to 1978, what might we find?

You might have to update your wardrobe first, like donning a skin-tight “silk” Qiana blouse (actually a polymer-based fabric manufactured by DuPont), some hip-hugging bell bottoms and your platform shoes—and that’s just if you’re a man! Once you were dressed in high style, you could strut on down to the local disco where it seemed like most songs were about dancing, like that year’s hit “Last Dance,” performed by Donna Summer from a silly movie set in, you guessed it, a disco.

You might take some time out from all that dancing for some computer gaming. Yeah, the new Space Invaders game started the computer gaming revolution in 1978, but you’d probably have to figure out how to hook up your Atari gaming console to your television. No HDMI cables and flat-screen TVs here.

If you landed in Pulaski in 1978, you might have been one of the first persons to have participated in an event sponsored by the then new Fine Arts Center for the New River Valley. You would have visited us in our original site at the Fairview Home, a 1928 alms house located across from the Pulaski County High School, which would have been four years old at the time. The center moved to its current Main Street location a few years later and has remained a champion for the fine arts in Pulaski County and throughout the New River Valley.

Whizzing forward to the future, the Fine Arts Center has reached more than a million people through exhibits, concerts, classes, and other events. The Fine Arts Center showcases the work of both local artists and those across the region, encompassing most of Southwest Virginia. Among those are the many student artists who participate every year in our art shows and the Scholastic Art Awards program, which offers opportunities for scholarships and national recognition.

While the fashion and fun have changed a bit over 40 years, there’s one thing that hasn’t, and that’s the dedication of the Fine Arts Center for the New River Valley to support the fine arts in our region. We appreciate all you’ve done to help us get this far, and we wish to thank you for your support. Please stop by to celebrate our anniversary, enjoy an exhibit, or pick up a thoughtful gift, and share your own memories with us.