Reynolda House is one of the sweetest, loveliest museums in the country. I’ve been there many times because it has a superb collection of American paintings, but I hadn’t visited in probably ten years. It’s part of Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., so it’s a university art museum but it’s a grand house, the home of the Reynolds tobacco barons. It wasn’t part of the school until recently, so its collection is eccentric and not curriculum-driven. It’s a unique place. I visited during my road trip through North Carolina.
Frederic Church, Eakins, Bierstadt, Thomas Cole, Georgia O’Keeffe, and many others are in the Reynolda House collection, in a comfortable, idiosyncratic home setting, and at 3 p.m. there’s a short recital via the pipe organ in the grand reception room.
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