Jessica Bell Brown assumed her new role as executive director of the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University in October. (Photo by Justin T. Gellerson)
When chatting about the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, its new executive director, Jessica Bell Brown, uses the term “porosity.” She explains, “It’s to be porous, or open.” Putting the term in context of the ICA, she says, “We’re not a collecting institution, so we can take on more risk. That means we have more capacity to make new questions with artists, to promote and provoke.”
That is, the museum is not only commissioning work produced on-site (49 works thus far original to residencies at the ICA) or exhibiting the results, but also spurring the conversation and engagement of those who visit.
For Brown, the ICA is a community center participating in the arts and cultural fabric of the region, with connections and relationships that span the country and the world.
“Museums and public institutions are more and more important gathering places for the exchange of art and ideas,” she observes, “and we are operating in alignment with what the current moment demands.”
Brown, who joined the ICA in late October 2024, says her vision for the museum is to make it a place for all with something for everyone, including programming, dialogues and the building itself. “All of this is to hold people’s attention and promote new sorts of ways of questioning our world, new ways of being in community, and really asking questions of each other on a deeper level,” she says.
The Princeton and Northwestern university graduate comes to the ICA from the Baltimore Museum of Art, where she curated and administered its contemporary art department. In 2017, during a Mellon Museum Research Consortium fellowship at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, she worked on the exhibition “Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends.” In 2020, she received an Andy Warhol Foundation Curatorial Research Fellowship and joined the 2023 class of the Villa Albertine’s Museums Next Generation program.
Brown is also no stranger to Richmond. While living in Baltimore, one of her first regional visits brought her to the ICA. She was impressed by the Steven Holl-designed building and the exhibitions in the galleries, including Guadalupe Maravilla’s “Provocations,” which featured the Salvadoran immigrant artist’s totemic sculptures of steel, gongs and objects found on the U.S. and Mexico border.
“It blew my mind,” Brown says. “And after that, I started coming to Richmond as a visitor with my family and for long weekends. I never thought in a million years that I’d be living and working in Richmond. It’s sort of amazing to me, coming full circle, like maybe we were manifesting this without knowing.”
Brown has enjoyed learning the city’s textures and folds, the histories visible and beneath the surface. During her first weekend here as a resident, she visited the Cedar Street Baptist Church of God, one of the city’s oldest Black congregations, and the baptistry addition designed by the city’s second licensed Black contractor, Ethel Bailey Carter Furman. She notes that Church Hill’s history extends beyond Patrick Henry and St. John’s Church. “But there’s so many other amazing stories to tell, especially when you think about Black cultural and spiritual life in Richmond,” Brown says. “I’m really thrilled to have the ICA be a part of this conversation.”
