The Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art in Virginia Beach will open its new home on the campus of Virginia Wesleyan University on April 18, 2026, marking a major milestone in the Museum’s 70-year history. Located adjacent to the Susan S. Goode Fine and Performing Arts Center on VWU’s campus, the new 35,000-plus square foot facility expands programmable space by 20% and significantly enhances exhibition, education, and event capabilities.
Virginia MOCA remains an independent, accredited museum. And much more. Motivating its desire for a new building was the institution’s efforts and interests beyond hanging art.
“This new building is purpose built for who we are now and where we're going, not only more exhibition space and more education space, but as a gathering space for the community,” Alison Byrne, executive director at Virginia MOCA, told me via video interview. “This new location on the grounds of Virginia Wesleyan University–the University is really known for that, as a gathering place for the community; yes, for the university students, but they also host a number of different organizations already. It's a very welcoming campus.”
Byrne vetted many potential location partners from colleges to other museums. VWU offered multiple advantages.
“We have many donors who are crossover between the two organizations because we're so educationally focused, and our building is actually right beside their arts complex,” she explained. “That's a big part of it, that their art students can be involved in what we do, work study programs and internships, etcetera.”
Designed as both a museum and a civic space, the new Virginia MOCA in the heart of Hampton Roads invites the public into contemporary art in a way that feels open, immediate, and shared.
“We leaned into flexibility. When you come into the main space, we have a large atrium, but the architect leaned into the fact that on an average day we open to the public, we might host 100 teachers for professional development, so thinking about how spaces can be divided at any one time,” Byrne explained of the building design.
No detail was too small.
“Even little things like furniture. We visited museums all over the world and thought about comfortable spaces where when you're done looking at art, or you just want to come in and hang out and grab a coffee or look at books, really thinking about spaces for people to be,” Byrne said.
The new Museum features ARTlab, a dedicated hands-on education space designed for learners of all ages; flexible studios for workshops and public programs; and event areas suited for lectures, performances, weddings, and community gatherings. The building reinforces the Museum’s role as a cultural and educational resource for K–12 students, university students, artists, and the broader public.
Expanded galleries are also capable of accommodating larger and more complex exhibitions.
“(Galleries) are so much bigger in scope than where we were before,” Byrne said. “Thinking about what's possible in this space that we just couldn't do, we have paintings like a 28 foot painting in Nina Chanel Abney’s exhibition that we couldn't have even gotten in the old building, never mind had a wall for it.”
Abney (b. 1982), perhaps best known for her major public art projects around the nation–or her brand collabs with the likes of Nike, Tiffany & Co., Crocs, and Timberland–has the distinction of being the new museum’s first solo exhibition.
“The Pursuit of Happiness” brings together monumental paintings, collages, sculpture, and an immersive installation confronting how people imagine joy, struggle, and survival in a time of global uncertainty. The show will be on view through August 16, 2026.
The museum’s relationship with Abney goes back to a 2020 group exhibition.
“Her painting was the first piece when you walked in and it was a favorite of so many people, so when we were thinking about an artist for this new space, if you know her name and how big of a deal she is, you would be excited that she's here, travel for it, she’s very important,” Byrne said. “If you don't, the work is vibrant and bold and big and accessible, but also complex at the same time. We have her work all over the community on billboards and other places.”
Virginia MOCA hosts a sold-out conversation with Abney and hip hop artist Pusha T on April 16 to pre-launch its new building. The pairing is intentional, with Pusha T being from the area, and speaks to how the Museum is thinking about audience and cultural relevance from the start.
“We really want to be that space, that kind of third space, where the community can come and be, and be inspired, and happen to have art around them,” Byrne said.
Admission to the museum is free for Virginia residents.
Virginia Day Trip
One hundred miles northwest of Virginia Beach in Richmond, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts presents two additional must-see exhibitions from leading Black contemporary artists.
“Titus Kaphar and Junius Brutus Stearns: Pictures More Famous than the Truth” juxtaposes scenes from the life of George Washington by painter Junius Brutus Stearns (1810–1885) with contemporary portraits and sculptural works by former MacArthur Fellow Titus Kaphar (b. 1976) offering 21st century perspectives on the Virginia-born president. Stearns’ works played a key role in mythologizing Washington and his place in history. Kaphar’s works function as additions or amendments to traditional portraits of Washington and reclaim part of this narrative for the enslaved individuals long excluded from the dominant story.
“Pictures More Famous than the Truth” can be seen through July 26, 2026.
Opening April 18 and on view through August 2, “Mary Lovelace O’Neal: Blacker Than a Hundred Midnights Down in a Cypress Swamp” celebrates a defining decade in the career of abstract painter Mary Lovelace O’Neal (b. 1942)
Lovelace O’Neal’s work is rooted in her activism, which began while she was a student at Howard University, where she received her B.F.A. in 1964. Mentored at Howard by celebrated artist and art historian David Driskell, Lovelace O’Neal was a summer resident in 1963 at the Skowhegan School of Sculpture and Painting in Maine when she happened upon the lampblack pigment. The deep rich pigment—powdered soot from burning oil — came to symbolize biographical, social, and political themes within the artist’s work.
Beginning in 1969 as a graduate student at Columbia University, Lovelace O’Neal created her Lampblack series. The decade that followed not only cemented the future direction of the artist’s work, but also set the tone for how abstraction by Black artists could push the genre of painting forward, while being socially engaged and politically charged.
Lovelace O’Neal describes the lampblack paintings as, “as black as they could be,” alluding to their literal blackness, as well as their ability to, “give voice to the intangible elements of the human spirit.”
Among the works in the exhibition is a painting titled Blacker Than a Hundred Midnights Down in a Cypress Swamp, which VMFA acquired in 2024. The painting, and the exhibition’s title, were taken from “The Creation” (1920), a poem by James Weldon Johnson, who also wrote the Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
The painting Blacker Than a Hundred Midnights Down in a Cypress Swamp will join eight additional large-scale lampblack paintings and 11 works on paper in the exhibition. These 20 works have not been seen together since 1979 when they were exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
The artist will visit VMFA for a talk on July 16, 2026.
Admission to the museum is free.
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