Amy G. Moorefield, who has shepherded VCUarts Anderson Gallery on an interim basis since 2004, is moving on.

She will become the director of the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum, the 4-year-old art showcase at Hollins University near Roanoke, on Aug. 18.

Moorefield joined Anderson in 1994 as a student intern and became the Virginia Commonwealth University art museum's assistant director and curator of collections in 1998.

She took the temporary reins when Ted Potter, now deceased, stepped down as director four years ago.

Moorefield, 36, is preening-proud of what she's accomplished in those four years.

"Ted had alienated the public terribly," she says. "A successful director is one who makes inroads and invites the public in, and that wasn't happening."

Attendance has increased 45 percent during her tenure, Moorefield says, and school group visitations have risen 30 percent.

"The Anderson used to get one or two donations a year to the permanent collection," she continues. "Now, we're adding about 20 pieces a year, not counting the 600 we received from Theresa Pollak's estate. We don't have an acquisitions budget, so all those pieces were solicited."

How did she turn Anderson around?

"I went door to door in the university and local art communities to invite people personally to come to the gallery," she says. "I increased the permanent collection mostly by having conversations with people who were looking to place their work."

Moorefield is hoping her active approach to increasing attendance and augmenting the permanent collection will work wonders at the three-gallery, 3,300-square-foot Wilson Museum as well.

"The Wilson Museum and Hollins are not in the city of Roanoke," she says. "They're in the county of Roanoke. The big challenge is to engage people in the city to come to exhibitions and programming.

"The museum is only 6 miles outside the city. It's not a distance issue so much as a mental issue. It takes a mental leap to get city people to come to the Wilson Museum."

Wilson, an affiliate of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, is named after a 1930 Hollins graduate who went on to become a Tony-nominated Broadway and Hollywood actress -- she played Warren Beatty's mother in "Reds" -- and abstract painter before she died in 2002.

Eleanor D. Wilson gave Hollins $3 million to create a fine-arts center and bequeathed the university an additional $6.5 million to create and endow her namesake museum.