NEW YORK CITY —The house lights go down. The stage lights go up.

And here, in the back room of one of Manhattan's most exclusive art galleries, the folks from the little art museum in Roanoke, Va. get another private show.

In the old days — say, 1998 — the museum couldn’t dream of acquiring such works. But this is 1999 — June 1999 — and a donor has taken the museum beneath his wing.

Heywood Fralin, administrator of the Horace G. Fralin Charitable Trust, has vowed to help transform the museum’s collection into something Roanoke can be proud of.

He is a big man, more than 6 and a half feet tall, whose wide grin and deep laugh hide a perpetual motion machine. He does not stop for drinks, snacks, photographs or sightseeing — though he does marvel at a few of the more interesting skyscrapers along the way.

"We're trying to build a significant American collection," Fralin says, and he means it. This trip alone results in two million-dollar purchases: "Across the Park," by the impressionist Childe Hassam, and "Woodchopper in the Adirondacks," by nature painter Winslow Homer.

For the first time, the museum has trophy works by two major American artists.