The Spurrier Group has won a contract to provide strategic marketing and media planning services for the upcoming Kehinde Wiley exhibit at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts located in Richmond.

The contract was awarded to Spurrier Group following a competitive agency review and will center around an integrated marketing campaign to promote the exhibit making appearances across the U.S., most recently at the Seattle Art Museum.

“We are thrilled to again be promoting a high profile and stunning exhibit of this stature for VMFA,” said Donna Spurrier, founder and chief executive officer of the Richmond-based agency. “We know their customer well and have been able to get them great results, including helping sell more than half-million exhibit tickets.”

The Kehinde Wiley exhibit will be at the VMFA from June 11 through September 5, 2016. To order tickets, visit http://vmfa.museum/

“Spurrier Group has been a trusted marketing partner since our grand re-opening in 2010 and we are pleased that we will be able to benefit once again from their strategic insights into the VMFA target audience,” said Allan Altholz, director of marketing and communications. Kehinde Wiley will be the seventh VMFA project for the Spurrier Group.

Previous assignments included the recent “Rodin: Evolution of a Genius” exhibit as well as “Forbidden City: Imperial Treasures from the Palace Museum,” “Hollywood Costume,” “Fabergé Revealed,” and “Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso.”

According to VMFA, the Kehinde Wiley exhibit represents a retrospective of the artist’s prolific career through 55 paintings and sculptures. Wiley’s work raises intriguing questions about race, gender, and the politics of representation by portraying contemporary African American men and women using the conventions of traditional European portraiture. Appropriating the format of specific paintings by renowned masters ranging from Titian to Édouard Manet, Wiley often depicts his subjects wearing sneakers, hoodies, and other gear associated with today’s hip-hop culture and sets them against ornate decorative backgrounds that evoke earlier eras and cultures.

Kehinde Wiley’s works are in the collections of over 40 museums, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Seattle Art Museum; Brooklyn Museum; and Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

Founded in 1996, Spurrier Group, a Capitol Communicator sponsor, is a marketing partner dedicated to measurable ROI through research, strategy and media. The agency analyzes and then simplifies data to understand how to strategically reach and then motivate their clients’ target audiences. Spurrier Group’s research leads to customer insights that educate and inform the entire marketing process. Spurrier Group was recently ranked the seventh largest advertising agency in the D.C. metropolitan region, and it is consistently listed among the top agencies in Richmond. For more information, visit www.spurriergroup.com