8 Things to Know Before You Visit

There are some amazing selfie opportunities here!

A sneak peak of our fair trade gift shop.

Many of our tours are small and intimate like this one.

If you're lucky, we'll have an Indigenous artist or two visiting while you're here. Check out our calendar to see!

Visitors from France explore the work of Emily Kame Kngwarreye.

There's a lot to contemplate here.

UVA students in the galleries.

Admission is free and we are open Tuesdays through Sundays, 10 am – 4 pm. For holiday hours, check our calendar.

We are small, but the experience is rich.

The average visit lasts between 30 and 90 minutes. Despite only being able to show 1% of our collection at a time, visitors regularly comment on how captivated they were with the art on view, and remark on how helpful and interesting the exhibition text is! Special exhibitions are accompanied by a free exhibition catalog. Our library is open to the public and available for research. There is a reason visitors call us a Charlottesville gem!

We offer tours daily.

Free, 20-30 minute tours are offered every day we are open at 10:30 am and 1:30 pm, led by a Volunteer Guide. Click here to make a tour reservation. If you are visiting with a group of more than 12 people, please fill out our tour request form and we’ll respond as soon as we can.

For those who would like a longer, more specialized experience, staff tours are available on a case-by-case basis for groups of 13 or more, with the assumption of a donation of at least $100 to account for the staff member’s time (UVA faculty and Virginia public schools are exempt from the donation). These tours can be tailored to specific learning goals or interests. Click here to fill out our tour request form.

We’re family friendly!

Ask for a self-guided gallery activity appropriate for ages 3 – 12 at the front desk. Spend some time in the breezeway, where we always have colored pencils and markers to draw in response to the art on view. Explore the touch station of common materials used by Indigenous Australian artists. Ask for the tree map at the front desk and explore the trees surrounding the museum. Peruse the children’s books authored or illustrated by Indigenous Australians in the library. There is a lot for kids to do here!

Easy access for all is important to us.

We’re located on the east side of Charlottesville in the Pantops area (not on UVA Grounds). Click here for directions and more transport information. The museum is ADA accessible; please call the museum at 434-243-8504 when you arrive or in advance to let us know how we can best accommodate you. Click here for a full list of our accessibility measures. Service animals are permitted in all public spaces of the museum. There is a baby-changing table in one of the public restrooms.

Expect contemporary art.

When many Americans think about Indigenous Australian art, they imagine art that is at least a few hundred years old, probably made with natural materials. Not so! Our collection mostly dates from 1940 onwards and we always have cutting-edge contemporary Indigenous art on view in our rotating gallery.

We have a fair-trade, one-of-a-kind gift shop.

The museum has a small gift shop with books, jewelry, and housewares highlighting Indigenous Australian art and designs. Our gift shop is fair trade; we only buy wholesale from Aboriginal-owned art centers and vendors that pay royalties directly to the artists and their communities. Some of our gift shop is available at the University of Virginia Bookstore; click here to see what’s there.

We are close to tasty eats.

There are many restaurants on Route 250 and Pantops Shopping Center. There are eight locally-owned restaurants ranging from kebobs to sushi to diner-style cuisine and seven restaurant chains.

You can make a day of it.

What can you do before or after visiting the museum? The trails at nearby Martha Jefferson Hospital surround the museum and are beautifully landscaped with ponds, wildlife and sculpture. Darden Towe Park is a five-minute drive and has a playground, a dog park, soccer fields, softball fields, the Rivanna river, and walking trails. The Lewis and Clark Exploratory Center, a nonprofit that investigates the legacies of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, is located in Darden Towe Park.

The Downtown Mall, a pedestrian center with shops and restaurants, is 3 miles away. Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson and a UNESCO World Heritage site, is 6.5 miles away, and if you are travelling from downtown or the west side of Charlottesville, we are a nice place to stop on your way to Monticello.