Cynthia Fraula-Hahn is an artist, arts activist and art historian based in Winchester. Her art has been featured nationally in solo and group exhibitions in New York City, Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Richmond. She has also exhibited in numerous educational institutions and galleries in Virginia and West Virginia. From 1994 to 1996 she was artist in residence at Kalani Honua in Pahoa, Hawaii, with one-person exhibits there in 1994 and 1996. Her professional achievements include an individual grant from The Puffin Foundation, Ltd.

Ms. Fraula-Hahn speaks frequently on women in the arts. She has been a speaker in the Women and the Arts Lecture series, Leesburg, Virginia, and a guest on public television and radio programs, including “Art Speak” (Public Broadcasting Service, Sterling, Virginia); “Crossroads” (WCTV, Winchester); “State of the Arts” (National Public Radio, Santa Cruz, California),and “Talk of the Town” (WHSV, Harrisonburg, Virginia). From 1999 to 2003 she served as a panelist on the Project and Organizational Grants panel of the Virginia Commission for the Arts.

In a career highlighted by arts activism, Ms. Fraula-Hahn has served on the Artist Directory committee of the Washington Project for the Arts; as a liaison between the Corcoran Museum of Art and Lord Fairfax Community College; and as a board member of the Lord Fairfax Community College Education Foundation. She has been featured in articles on the arts for The Winchester Star and the Northern Virginia Daily. In 2004 she contributed to the catalogue for the Korean and American International Exchange exhibition.

“Lot 24: The Wheelchair Project,” a traveling exhibition organized by Ms. Fraula-Hahn in 2002, received an individual artist’s grant from The Puffin Foundation in 2003. This issue-oriented exhibition contains studio paintings, collaborative paintings, sculpture and a video performance piece by the artist. Shenandoah University hosted the premiere of “The Wheelchair Project” in 2002; subsequently it has traveled to the headquarters of the U.S. Social Security Administration, the Senate Russell Office Building, the Virginia General Assembly and VSA Arts of Richmond.

On Tuesday, March 7, 2006 at 7:30 p.m., Ms. Fraula-Hahn will present a public lecture on Mexican modernist artist Frida Kahlo at the Shenandoah University History and Tourism Center, 20 South Cameron Street, Winchester. The lecture will also include the opening of the exhibition, “Celebrating Women’s History Month: The Art and Scholarship of Cynthia Fraula-Hahn and Helen Langa.” Also on March 7, she will engage students on the SU main campus with a presentation and discussion on Italian 17th-century painter Artemisia Gentileschi. These talks will take place (in Gregory 152) from 9:30 to 10:45 a.m. and 11-12:15.

Ms. Fraula-Hahn received her MFA in painting and printmaking, as well as her BFA, from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. She also studied interior design at the University of Maryland in College Park. The lectures and exhibition celebrating her art and scholarship are generously supported by a gift from Virginia-Wojno Forney and the Shenandoah University Women’s Studies program. All events are free and open to the public.