Shenandoah University marked Founders’ Day 2026 with the usual commemoration of its rich 151-year history, along with a few nods to the university’s historic sesquicentennial celebration that took place in 2025. This year’s Founders’ Day event also celebrated something new – the grand opening of an exhibit of over 200 original works by renowned artist Andrei Kushnir that now grace the halls of multiple buildings on Shenandoah’s main campus in Winchester, Virginia.
Kushnir, who worked closely with Shenandoah University Professor of History Warren Hofstra, Ph.D., and the university’s Office of Advancement, graciously gifted the university a collection of 231 original oil paintings of the Shenandoah Valley. Nearly 200 of the paintings are displayed in Halpin-Harrison Hall, home of Shenandoah University’s School of Business, where visitors gathered on Thursday, Feb. 12, to celebrate SU’s birthday and enjoy the history and beauty of the Shenandoah Valley captured in Kushnir’s works.
In addition to Halpin-Harrison Hall, 35 paintings are split between Davis Hall – home of SU’s History Department as well as the Winchester-Frederick County Convention & Visitors Bureau – and the Wilkins Administration Building.
Kushnir’s collection is a natural fit for Shenandoah University, whose roots span the valley with which it shares its name. Shenandoah was established in Dayton, Virginia, in 1875, and called the southern end of the Shenandoah Valley home until its move north to Winchester in 1960. Shenandoah University has flourished in the northern Shenandoah Valley, hitting record enrollment for the third straight year with 4,488 students in Fall 2025 and growing to include nearly 250 areas of study.
“As we celebrate this northward journey on Route 11 from Dayton to Winchester today, we are also celebrating our enduring connection to the Shenandoah Valley through a monumental gift to the Shine campaign,” said Shenandoah University President Tracy Fitzsimmons, Ph.D., in reference to the school’s historic $100 million fundraising initiative. “Today, we are officially unveiling the Andrei Kushnir collection, a landmark gift of 231 original oil paintings. These works provide an artistic and accurate record of the landscapes and sites surrounding our university and our beautiful valley, and they connect us deeply to all that it stands for.”
Kushnir, who began painting in 1981, spent 15 years – from 2000 to 2015 – completing his artistic recreation of many sites located throughout the Shenandoah Valley, including its famous river, rural landscapes, historic towns, Civil War battlefields, and cultural and religious places of importance. His goal, he said, was to not only capture the valley as it appeared in the early 21st century, but to also show how it was changing.
Kushnir’s Shenandoah Valley collection is featured in the book “Oh, Shenandoah: Paintings of the Historic Valley and River,” which was published in 2018 by George F. Thompson, who was in attendance for the exhibit’s grand opening along with many of Kushnir’s friends and family members. Kushnir, addressing the crowd, expressed his gratitude for the many people who aided his artistic endeavors, extending an emotional thank you to his children, Basil and Larissa – who were also in attendance – and his late wife, who traveled with him to scout many of the locations he captured with his brush.
We should realize at every moment that we are in a legendary place. Anywhere you go in the world, everybody knows about the Shenandoah Valley, and everybody knows about its magnificence and its beauty and its graces. … My painting mentor is an artist named Michele Martin Taylor … and she had a particular way of looking at things. She said, ‘If you really love a place and you paint that place, it’ll come through in your painting.’ And I feel that that’s true. I’m glad to share my excitement and my curiosity and my joy with everyone.”
Andrei Kushnir
Fittingly, the final Shenandoah Valley painting that Kushnir completed in 2015 was of the Route 11 Potato Chip factory in Mount Jackson, Virginia, which was undergoing an expansion at the time that was symbolic of the valley’s growth and change. Two representatives of Route 11 Potato Chips – founder and President Sarah Cohen and Chief Strategy Officer Vail Henry – were in attendance at SU’s Founders’ Day ceremony, having earlier been recognized by Dr. Fitzsimmons for their “bold step” in collaborating with the university to design and release a commemorative bag for its lightly salted chips that honored the university’s 150th year. It was the first private label Route 11 Potato Chips had created for one of its products.
The Founders’ Day ceremony concluded with remarks from longtime Professor of History Warren Hofstra, Ph.D., who took the audience back to the years leading up to Shenandoah’s founding in 1875, exploring Virginia’s political and societal landscape in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War and the important role played – then and now – by the valley’s and Shenandoah’s enduring spirit. It’s the same spirit, Hofstra said, that Kushnir accurately portrayed in his paintings of the Shenandoah Valley.
“What Andre has accomplished in this collection is beauty, a resource for education, but he’s also captured something much less tangible but something we all feel very powerfully,” Dr. Hofstra said. “And that is the spirit of the place.”
