Claudia Pfeiffer: A Passion for Sporting Art

By Louisa Woodville

The versatile Claudia Pfeiffer greets friends and members of the National Sporting Library & Museum at various events.

Photo by Douglas Lees

As the George L. Ohrstrom, Jr. Head Curator of Middleburg’s National Sporting Library and Museum, Claudia Pfeiffer and her staff of two oversee the exhibitions the NSLM mounts.

“We do everything soup to nuts,” Claudia said. “My role is to come up with the exhibition—its thesis or theme—and find the artwork to support it.”

She’s been curator since March, 2012. In October 2011, the museum launched its inaugural exhibition, Afield in America: 400 Years of Animal & Sporting Art. The curator of that exhibition, Turner Reuter, had worked with Claudia since she and her husband, Ron, first moved to the area inn 1998.

“Ron’s parents had a farm in Landenberg, in southern Chester County [Pennsylvania],” she said. “In the mid-‘90s, we were seeing farmland convert to suburbs quite quickly. So we came here where people were very much invested in keeping the countryside. “

Today Ron, Claudia, and their two children — Walter, 11, and Chloe,9—live just outside Front Royal. The versatile Claudia Pfeiffer greets friends and members of the National Sporting Library & Museum at various events.

“Turner initially hired me as a six-month temp to help him finish his book,” Claudia said, referring to the 880-page Animal & Sporting Artists in America—the basis of that first exhibition. “It ended up taking us over a decade to get it done from there.”

She worked for Reuter, a mentor for 13 years, ultimately becoming director of Red Fox Fine Art, Reuter’s sporting art gallery in Middleburg. Over those years, she developed an invaluable network.

“When I moved here, I really didn’t know a lot about sporting art,” she said. “I was expecting to be a six--month temp. But then I fell in love with sporting art history and culture and the people who still live it today.”

Peter Winants (1926-2009), the renowned late editor, author, and steeplechasing expert, was the first director of the National Sporting Library. He helped Claudia learn the ropes when she visited the library for research.

Walking around the museum now is an illuminating experience, with special exhibitions and the permanent collection mounted on two floors.

“There are so many great stories here,” she said, pointing to portraits by acclaimed artist Ellen Emmet Rand, one of the current exhibitions.

“There’s something really powerful about that sense of time and place that sporting art represents,” she said. “There’s a universal truth to it.”

Another exhibition, Phyllis Mills Wyeth: A Celebration, features 31 works by Phyllis’ husband Jamie Wyeth, the renowned portrait painter from Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. As a teenager, Phyllis was partially paralyzed in a car accident, ending her days of fox hunting, point-to-point racing, and other activities she loved. Despite this setback, she continued to embrace life, becoming a competitive driver of Connemara ponies and combined driving. “One of the things about these paintings is that Phyllis Mills Wyeth’s story is really powerful,” Claudia said. “She has a broken neck, it takes a year to recover, and she walks with crutches until 2000 when she’s then in a wheelchair. People who knew her never saw her that way because she’s such a tenacious spirit and just such a force of nature. She never really let that love of being an equestrian diminish in anyway. She became a champion carriage driver instead.”

“The exhibition is an intimate tribute by one of the most recognized artists of our time to his (late) wife,” Claudia said, adding that It’s “a loving testimony to their 50-year marriage, and the embodiment of Phyllis’s tenacious spirit.”

Curator Claudia Pfeiffer speaks frequently on the subject of the latest museum exhibition she’s produced.

Photo by Doug Gehlsen of Middleburg Photo

Most of the exhibitions are organized and installed by Claudia and her team, Collections Manager Lauren Kraut and Art Handler Alex Orfila. First, they present an exhibition idea to the NSLM’s Museum Exhibitions and Collection Committee. If an idea is accepted, Claudia gets to work. After identifying works from the NSLM’s own collection, the hunt is on for works from other museums or private collections.

Curating and mounting an exhibition entails overseeing many details, from conceptually designing the exhibition to securing the loans of art, labeling the works with words that engage the viewer, and writing a catalog that must appeal to a broad range— scholars, neighbors, or visitors from afar.

The museum is broadening its reach with such exhibitions and in other exciting ways.

“There was a sense before the museum opened that this was a scholastic institute on the hill that was only for special people or a special type of person to access,” Claudia said. “One of our goals for posterity is that we’re engaging everyone to connect with country life because no one wants to see it go away. That’s a huge part of what we do.”