February 5, 2008

RICHMOND, Va. – The Dominion Foundation has provided a grant of $250,000 for the Art Museum of Western Virginia. The foundation is the philanthropic arm of Dominion, one of the nation’s largest energy producers.

The grant for the Art Museum, based in Roanoke, will be used to help pay for a new 81,000-square-foot facility, featuring American, Modern, Contemporary, Photography and New Media galleries, education spaces, a research library, works-on-paper study room, studio classroom and auditorium. The new museum is scheduled to open in November 2008.

“We are very pleased and proud to support this effort,” said William C. Hall Jr., Dominion vice president-Corporate Communications and Community Affairs and president of the Dominion Foundation. “The Art Museum of Western Virginia is a major regional institution. Its expansion program will help reach a broad population in an area encompassing 40 counties.”

The Dominion Foundation awarded approximately $15 million to 1,081 nonprofit organizations in 25 states and the District of Columbia last year, primarily to organizations in Virginia, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and other states where Dominion operates power stations, natural gas and other energy facilities.

Grant focus areas included preservation of natural and historic resources, workforce development and education, diversity initiatives, neighborhood and community development, and meeting basic needs for food, shelter and clothing.

Dominion is one of the nation's largest producers and transporters of energy, with a portfolio of approximately 26,500 megawatts of generation, 7,800 miles of natural gas transmission pipeline and 1 trillion cubic feet equivalent (Tcfe) of proved natural gas and oil reserves.  Dominion also owns and operates the nation's largest underground natural gas storage system with about 960 billion cubic feet of storage capacity and serves retail energy customers in 11 states. For more information about Dominion, visit the company's Web site at http://www.dom.com.

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