Virginia Museum Of Contemporary Art Opening New Building In Virginia Beach

The Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art in Virginia Beach will open its new, purpose-built home on the campus of Virginia Wesleyan University on April 18, 2026.

New Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art at Virginia Wesleyan University, April 2026. Exterior banner features artwork from inaugural exhibition 'Nina Chanel Abney: The Pursuit of Happiness.' Virginia MOCA

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.

Nina Chanel Abney, 'I Am – Somebody,' 2022. Collage on panel, diptych. © Nina Chanel Abney. Courtesy of the artist

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

'Shadows of Liberty,' 2016, Titus Kaphar (American, born 1976), oil and rusted nails on canvas. Yale University Art Gallery, Purchased with a gift from Ellen and Stephen Susman, B.A. 1962, 2017.67 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

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.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chaddscott/

Deal Reached With Norfolk Southern To Expand Rail Service In Parts Of Virginia

State officials approved a deal with Norfolk Southern to expand commuter and passenger rail services in southwestern and northern Virginia.

The Virginia Passenger Rail Authority announced that the agreement would extend a passenger rail into the New River Valley, allowing state officials to run passenger trains between Roanoke and Christiansburg on the private rail company’s main rail line, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

With access to the line, state officials said, they could add passenger services to Norfolk Southern’s Cambria Yard station in Christiansburg, which served as a passenger terminal from 1904 to 1979.

Officials with the state authority said they also purchased Norfolk Southern-owned rails in Northern Virginia, which could bolster efforts to increase commuter rail stops between Prince William County and Washington, D.C. Officials said they plan to add train service during the evenings and over weekends.

“We are excited to deliver these benefits as we continue to accelerate results not only in these two regions, but across the entire Commonwealth,” Governor Glenn Youngkin said in a statement.

In a news release, Rail Authority Executive Director DJ Stadtler thanked Norfolk Southern for partnering with the state. “We look forward to finalizing this agreement, which will make passenger rail a viable option for even more Virginians,” Stadtler said.

Virginia’s Oldest Juried Crafts Fair Returns For Its 80th Year

Since 1943, the Waterford Foundation and the historic village of Waterford have welcomed visitors to experience one of the country’s most unique fall crafts and arts fairs and tour some of the historic homes in the charming village. The Waterford Fair takes place on October 4-6 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily with an early bird ticket available for entry on Friday, Oct. 4 at 9 a.m. This historic village provides an opportunity to step back into history and is the perfect setting for a fall outing.

The weekend features 79 of the finest American artisans, many from Loudoun County and the Mid-Atlantic (many nationally known), that will demonstrate their crafts and sell their beautiful, handmade pieces. In addition, there will be lively performances of traditional music and dance; historical interpreters and Virginia-specific talks; and a fine arts exhibit. A tour of the village will offer guests a look into restored historic homes and buildings with more than eleven buildings and gardens on the tour (different places open daily) and will include a walk through Civil War and Quaker cemeteries. On Friday, a special reenactment of a day in an 1880’s classroom will take place in Waterford’s one-room schoolhouse. Check the website for specific artisans, homes and gardens on tour, the daily entertainment schedule and other activities (www.waterfordfairva.org).

New this year is an exciting collaboration, and new tradition, with neighbors and friends John and Bonnie Branding of the nationally-recognized estate brewery Wheatland Spring Farm + Brewery. For the first time ever the fair is offering attendees a beer created especially for the fair, the “80th Anniversary Waterford Fair Beer”.

The fair’s entertainment lineup this year includes The Danny Knicely Trio, The Plate Scrapers, Fiddlin' Dave Van Deventer and Morgan Morrison, and the popular duo of Ashlee Watkins & Andrew Small, from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwest Virginia. Their strong harmonies captivate audiences as the two move effortlessly between fiddle, banjo, mandolin, and guitars. They have won many fiddle awards including first place with The Alum Ridge Boys & Ashlee at the 85th Annual Galax Old Fiddler’s Convention. They have been featured in the 2022 IBMA Songwriter Showcase and won first prize in the 29th Annual MerleFest: Chris Austin Songwriting Contest. The duo has also been featured on the PBS television show Song of the Mountains. More information on Ashlee & Andrew can be found here: watkinsandsmall.com. All performances are included in the fair ticket.

Hunt Country Stable Tour Returns For 65th Year Providing A Rare Look At Equine Life In Virginia Horse Country

After a brief hiatus, the popular Hunt Country Stable Tour returns this year for its 65th anniversary, taking visitors through the gates of historic and private properties to experience a variety of horses and equestrian activities. The event takes place on Memorial Day Weekend— Saturday, May 25 and Sunday, May 26 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with special hours at some venues. The tour is self-driving and tickets are available online here. The cost is $40 per person (plus taxes and fees) and tickets are for both days of the tour. There is no charge for children 10 and under.

Highlights of the tour include a chance to go behind the scenes at Kinross and Poplar Grange Farms, two private equine estates with an array of horses in training. At Kinross, horses are trained for three-day eventing and fox hunting, while Poplar Grange trains jumpers and steeplechase horses. Both properties provide incredible facilities and spectacular views of the rolling hills of horse country.

At Oak Spring Farm, established by the late Paul and Bunny Mellon, visitors can explore the renowned hunter and jumper barns. The Mellons, notable figures in the equestrian world, bred internationally acclaimed horses including Sea Hero, winner of the Kentucky Derby. Notable visitors to the Mellons' stables included Jacqueline Kennedy, who enjoyed foxhunting with the famed Piedmont Fox Hounds.

The Piedmont Fox Hounds are the oldest hunt in the United States and will be at Trinity Church in Upperville (9108 John S. Mosby Hwy., Upperville) on Saturday at 9 a.m. It's an opportunity for all ages to watch the huntsman demonstrate working with his hounds using a horn and voice commands and mingle with the hounds.

The venue at Old Denton provides a unique experience to gain a newfound appreciation for mules as visitors will see firsthand their abilities across diverse disciplines such as dressage, western reining, and foxhunting. A carriage drive will also be part of this stop.

Additional demonstrations will be held throughout the weekend at various times and locations. Polo matches will be held both days at Phipps Field. The Middleburg Training Center will open Saturday morning only from 7 to 9 a.m. for visitors who wish to watch jockeys and trainers exercise Thoroughbred race horses.

The tour also includes Stoke Farm and Welbourne Inn, historic estates dating back to the 1800s. Welbourne will host historical reenactors who will recount some of the property’s history, which includes famous guests such as F. Scott Fitzgerald to Thomas Wolfe and others. Visitors to Stoke will be treated to breathtaking panoramic views of the rolling hills, verdant valleys, and distant mountain ranges while being enamored by the Ashland Bassets, Virginia’s oldest foot hunting pack, with the opportunity to get up close and personal.

Horse lovers can visit mares and foals at Virginia Tech’s Middleburg Agricultural Research and Extension Center (MARE), a 420-acre equine health and nutrition research facility. Salamander Resort will open its stables to showcase horses and students from local therapeutic riding programs, allowing attendees to engage with these special horses and volunteers. Learn more of the heritage of country pursuits with a tour of rare book and art collection at The National Sporting Library & Museum.

Proceeds from the tour benefit Trinity Ministries, providing financial support to organizations that enhance and enrich the lives of people in need.

For more information on the Hunt Country Stable Tour and its exciting line up of properties and experiences, visit https://trinityupperville.org/hunt-country-stable-tour.

Oldest Schoolhouse For Black Children In US Moved To Museum

A building believed to be the oldest surviving schoolhouse for Black children in the U.S. was hoisted onto a flatbed truck and moved a half-mile Friday to Colonial Williamsburg, a Virginia museum that continues to expand its emphasis on African American history.

Built 25 years before the American Revolution, the original structure stood near the college campus of William & Mary. The pinewood building held as many as 30 students at a time, some of them free Black children studying alongside the enslaved.

Hundreds of people lined the streets to celebrate its slow-speed trip into the heart of the living history museum, which tells the story of Virginia’s colonial capital through interpreters and restored buildings.

For historians and descendants alike, the Bray School contradicts the belief that all enslaved Americans were uneducated. But the school’s faith-based curriculum — created by an English charity — also justified slavery and encouraged students to accept their fate as God’s plan.

“Religion was at the heart of the school, and it was not a gospel of abolition,” said Maureen Elgersman Lee, director of William & Mary’s Bray School Lab.

“There was this need to proselytize and to bring salvation while still not doing anything to destabilize the institution of slavery,” Lee said. “Save the soul, but continue to enslave the body. It was the here versus the hereafter.”

It was a brand of duplicity that fit easily into the larger contradictions of the country’s founding, when the Democracy being forged explicitly denied rights and freedoms to many of its people.

Williamsburg is less than 10 miles from Jamestown, which England established in 1607. The colony was supplied with enslaved Africans for labor just a dozen years later. A century and half after that, Black people, most of them still enslaved, represented just over half of Williamsburg’s 2,000 people.

The Bray School was established in 1760 at the recommendation of Benjamin Franklin, chairman of a London-based Anglican charity named after philanthropist Reverend Thomas Bray. The charity also set up schools in other cities, including New York and Philadelphia.

The curriculum ranged from spellers to the Book of Common Prayer. But even within the schools’ paternalistic framework, the education could still be empowering, perhaps even subversive.

“I was going through a facsimile of one of the books, and there are words like ‘liberty,’” Lee said. “What did learning those words do to expand these children’s sense of themselves? Their sense of the world?”

Isaac Bee, a Bray School student, would run away as an adult from a slave owner named Lewis Burwell. An ad that Burwell placed in The Virginia Gazette in 1774 offered a cash bounty for his return and warned that Bee could read.

The white teacher, a widow named Ann Wager, lived upstairs at the school, and taught an estimated 300 to 400 students, whose ages ranged from 3 to 10, according to surviving records.

The Williamsburg Bray School operated until 1774; only Philadelphia’s reopened after the Revolutionary War. The structure became a private home for many years before it was incorporated into William & Mary’s campus.

The former schoolhouse eventually was moved from its original spot to make way for a dormitory. The original structure had 1.5 stories, with a small upstairs. It was expanded over the years to include two full stories, and was last used as an office for ROTC, the college program that prepares military officers.

Historians believed they had identified the original Bray School building, but it wasn’t confirmed until 2021, through the use of dendrochronology, a scientific method that examines tree rings in lumber to determine the wood’s harvest date.

“This is a remarkable story of survival,” said Matthew Webster, Colonial Williamsburg’s executive director of architectural preservation and research. “And for us, it’s so important to put it back (to its original state) and tell the full and true story.” The Bray School was exceptional: Although Virginia waited until the 1800s to impose anti-literacy laws, white leaders across much of Colonial America forbid educating enslaved people, fearing literacy would encourage their liberty. South Carolina criminalized teaching slaves to write English in 1740.

Inside the schoolhouse, the original post at the bottom of the walnut staircase still stands, its square top rounded and nicked from centuries of use, Webster said, adding that it’s a “very powerful piece for a lot of people.”

For Tonia Merideth, the Bray School Lab’s oral historian, the building stirred up many emotions upon her first visit. It was material proof against the narrative that her ancestors were illiterate and dumb.

“Everything that I learned about my ancestors was wrong,” she said. “They could learn. They did learn. They were able.”
Merideth added: “Regardless of the intentions of the school, the children were still taking that education and possibly serving it for their own good and aiding in their community.”
Merideth can trace her roots to the Armistead family, which enslaved people in the Williamsburg area and is known to have sent at least one child, named Locust, to the Bray School. But only three years of student lists have survived.

The moving of the Bray School is part of Colonial Williamsburg’s ongoing reckoning over its past storytelling of Black history and the nation’s origin story. The museum was founded in 1926 but did not tell Black stories until 1979.

In 2021, it uncovered the brick foundation of one of the nation’s oldest Black churches. Last year, archeologists began to excavate graves at the site.

The Bray School’s new location is right next door.

“We’re going back and we’re getting that school and we’re getting that legacy,” Merideth said. “And we’re bringing it back to the historic area.”

By BEN FINLEY

Projects Examining Richmond Virginia's History Win $16M In Funding Including An Interpretive Center Honoring The Memory Of Enslaved People

The former Confederate capital has secured an $11 million grant to build an interpretive center that city officials hope will someday be part of an ambitious, long-envisioned memorial campus honoring the memory of enslaved people.

Richmond’s grant is among more than $16 million in total funding The Mellon Foundation is providing to recipients in Virginia’s capital city for projects that are “examining, preserving and reimagining” its “rich historical narratives,” the New York-based nonprofit told The Associated Press ahead of a formal announcement Tuesday.

Among the other grant recipients are a public art project, a museum and an initiative uplifting the story of a historically Black neighborhood. All are part of a push in Richmond — which recently removed its massive collection of Confederate statuary — to highlight other parts of its history.

“Richmond has been the site of many stories that have shaped our understanding of who we are as Americans, but public commemoration in Richmond historically has been limited to only a few,” Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Mellon Foundation, said in a statement.

“Today, the people of this city are lifting up the collective memory of its historic Black communities, unflinchingly addressing the city’s past as the capital of the state with the most enslaved people prior to the Civil War, and participating in the reimagining of the city’s public spaces to better reflect the fullness of its history,” Alexander said.

City officials said in an interview and in written plans shared with AP that the $11 million grant will fund the creation of an “interpretive center” in 12,300 square feet of space in the first floor of the sleek, glassy trainshed of historic Main Street Station, a landmark visible to motorists cutting through the city on Interstate 95.

Officials hope the center will be a space to welcome and orient visitors to Shockoe Bottom, one of the oldest neighborhoods in one of America’s oldest cities. The neighborhood was once a hub in the domestic slave trade, though that history is barely visible now.

Hundreds of thousands of men, women and children were jailed, bought and sold in Richmond, and shipped across the South in the decades preceding the Civil War. For a time, Richmond was second only to New Orleans as a slave-trading center.

Community activists have long pushed for public site in the neighborhood telling that history and honoring enslaved people, but the initiative has moved forward in fits and starts.

The preservation of Shockoe Bottom rose to national attention in 2014 when former Mayor Dwight Jones proposed a baseball stadium-centered economic development project in the area that was ultimately scuttled in the face of outrage from community members who said Shockoe Bottom was sacred ground.

Today, modest remembrances to the neighborhood’s slave-trading past are tucked away in a hard-to-find area adjacent to I-95, a parking lot and rumbling train tracks.
In 2020, Richmond officials joined by community activists outlined plans for a Shockoe Bottom heritage campus that would include a museum and a park for reflection. The state has chipped in funding and the city has set aside almost $28 million for the project, including the museum planning, which is in its earliest stages, faces flooding-related zoning hurdles and will require significant additional money.

The interpretive center will offer “a space to educate and immerse audiences in the history of Shockoe and is one of the first steps in bringing the larger Heritage Campus to fruition,” Mayor Levar Stoney said in a statement.

Officials say the center will provide educational and artistic content about Richmond’s role in the slave trade, and space for visitors to Shockoe Bottom to escape the elements and orient themselves to the neighborhood, which includes other historical sites, including the Virginia Holocaust Museum.

Richmond’s role in the slave trade,Among Mellon’s other Richmond grantees is The Valentine Museum, which is dedicated to the city’s history, and plans to use the money in part to “reimagine” the studio of Edward Valentine, a sculptor of Confederate figures.

The foundation is also backing The JXN Project, an initiative aimed at telling the story of the role Richmond, and especially the historically Black Jackson Ward neighborhood, played in the Black American experience.

Also receiving support are Reclaiming the Monument, a public art project that captured national attention for its projections on the now-removed base of an enormous Robert E. Lee statue; Untold RVA, an existing project that aims to tell hidden histories; and Cary Forward, which plans a “multidisciplinary arts space, interpretive center, artist/scholar residency, and archival library.”

The foundation said its award to Richmond was the first ever grant to a municipal government from its Monuments Project, a $250 million funding commitment launched in 2020 that aims to reimagine history-telling in public spaces.

In an interview, Alexander said the project had supported initiatives including the Kansas relocation of an approximately 25-ton stone considered sacred to the Kaw Nation, and the Irei project, an effort to build a memorial to people of Japanese ancestry incarcerated in camps during World War II.

In Richmond, which Alexander said she visited over the summer, the foundation found a city unusually eager to “contend and grapple” with its past.

“The only way to move forward anyplace is to really look truthfully at our past and to envision a better future that is based on truth-telling and reckoning,” Alexander said.

The foundation, which was established in 1969 by the children of industrialist, statesman and philanthropist Andrew W. Mellon, bills itself as the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities.

By SARAH RANKIN