The Taubman Museum is not just a repository of valuable art. It is also a living, changing cultural enterprise with a host of programs catering to a varied clientele.

The museum will have educational programs for children and adults, lectures, music, film, children's live theater and other features that defy quick description.

"It's not just all art history and painting," said Kimberly Templeton, the museum's director of external affairs. "There are lots of programs that are just fun."

A major goal of the new museum is to work with schoolchildren throughout Southwest Virginia. To that end, the museum will offer a fee-based, high-resolution video connection to schools over which museum education officials and students can see one another and talk. Museum officials can give lectures about paintings in the collection that relate to Standards of Learning requirements, such as "Pocahontas Saving the Life of Capt. John Smith" by Alonzo Chappel, while also taking questions. Schoolchildren can see what the museum has to offer, even though they may live hours away.

"It's not as good as being here," Templeton said. "But it's a pretty close second."

Other museum programs will include the following:

• Adult and teen volunteers. The museum is looking for volunteers as young as seventh-graders who are interested in donating their time to work at the museum. "We're looking for help and involvement," Templeton said. "Kids can do community service here."
• Programs for visitors with physical or developmental disabilities, including signed tours of the museum for the deaf.
• Thecontemporaries, a group of art-loving young professionals who will have quarterly social events at the museum. Its "Belle Epoque Ball" Dec. 31 will include dinner, dancing and circus performers. Two hundred glasses of champagne will be sold, with one glass containing a real diamond.
• Writing workshops, art classes, painting workshops and gallery talks.