Depending on your view, Virginia Commonwealth University’s Institute for Contemporary Art can look like the ornate lair of a Marvel Comics villain, a short stack of pyramids kicked over or (if you’re a modern art connoisseur) the gnarly deconstructions of Irish sculptor Matt Calderwood. But today, from all perspectives, this 41,000-square-foot congregation of slabs and cubes looks dark and lonely.
In mid-March, like other area cultural institutions, the 2-year-old museum shut its doors and canceled all remaining programs and exhibitions for the spring semester due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“These are unprecedented times,” says Dominic Willsdon, executive director of the ICA. “We feel fortunate to have the support and community that a large, public institution such as VCU can provide during the crisis.” The soft-spoken, U.K.-born administrator maintains that when things do eventually reopen, the public will need the modern art it showcases more than ever. “The ICA is one of those institutions that is meant to be sensitive to what is changing in the world,” he says.
It should be a time of celebration for the ICA, which was named as one of America’s “Ten Best New Museums” by USA Today earlier this year, the only contemporary art museum on the list. It also earned a rave from The New York Times, calling last year’s group exhibit “Great Force,” which examined white privilege and African American resistance, one of the art world’s unmissable events.
ICA Executive Director Dominic Willsdon (Photo by Michael Simon)
Willsdon, who came to the ICA from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Tate Modern in London, was hired in September 2018 to oversee a fledgling institution that had, as art market website ArtNet described it, a “troubled history,” mainly because its first executive director, Lisa Freiman, stepped down three months before it was to open.
“I think Dominic was a really smart choice,” says Ashley Kistler, the former director of VCU’s long-running Anderson Gallery, and current chair of Richmond’s Public Art Commission. “People have to remember that he’s only been in place for a year and [four] months and he inherited a pretty chaotic situation, and that doesn’t change overnight. It’s so ironic that [the ICA] was really getting on their feet in a vital way and then this calamity [of COVID-19 came along].”
One of the ICA exhibits currently on hold is “Xenogenesis,” created by a two-man art collective called The Otolith Group. Originally slated to run through July, this expansive show was the group’s first major exhibit in the United States. Its impressionistic assembly addresses, to quote the program notes, “contemporary global issues: how humans have shaped the natural world; what ‘we’ have inherited from colonialism; the unresolved histories of global Asian and African diasporas; and how ‘we’ are changing in response to new technologies.”
The ICA staff didn’t curate it — as it has with the other exhibits it has presented since opening — but “Xenogenesis” is in line with the challenging, enigmatic, political offerings that patrons have witnessed at the institute in its first two years. While programming is paused and as VCU unveils a new strategic plan for the ICA — and while we ponder a changed, post-COVID-19 environment, the questions are worth asking: Is this what Richmond expected when the ICA made its splashy debut two years ago? Is this what Richmond wants in a contemporary art museum?
Photo by Justin Chesney
‘A Totally Different Animal’
First, there’s that audacious building, meant to be a signpost as well as a monument to Richmond’s rise as an arts destination. “It was designed to be a gateway to the city,” says Kistler, who served as a liaison between the university and architect Stephen Holl during the ICA’s planning. “I would say that the building is difficult in some ways ... some exhibits just won’t work there.” That’s not unusual for a modern art showplace, she says. “It shouldn’t be like the Virginia Museum [of Fine Arts] or any other museum. It should be a totally different animal.”
“The building itself is such a departure from what we’re used to here in Richmond,” says Enjoli Moon, founder of the Afrikana Film Festival and assistant curator of film at the ICA. “Looking at it, a person might perceive a level of pretense ... but there’s been such a conscious effort here at the ICA to totally dismantle those traditional ideas that would circulate in an art space. We aren’t here for that. We want to offer people a fresh way of experiencing an arts institution.”
The outward shell looks imposing and cool — even icy — but it feels friendly when you step inside. With its welcoming lobby/meeting space, ornate staircase and four adaptable gallery spaces, Holl’s hulk was built to capture light and to feel inviting. Stephanie Smith, the ICA’s chief curator, says the museum’s central space was purposefully designed to feature two entrances, one from the campus side near Monroe Park, the other from Broad Street. “This shows that the ICA is open to a wide swath of the city,” she says.
“I think people are still trying to figure out what’s up with that big building on the corner.” —Enjoli Moon, ICA assistant curator of film
Long before its current location was determined, the idea was to erect a structure that was different from anything else in Richmond. “The planning for a state-of-the-art exhibition facility connected to the university and to the School of the Arts had been talked about for 20, 25 years,” says Kistler. “When Joe Seipel became dean of the School of the Arts, he took up the charge and helped make it happen ... he deserves enormous credit.”
Now back to being a full-time sculptor, Seipel, the ICA’s retired “father,” shifts credit to the late Beverly Reynolds, owner of the Reynolds Gallery, who had successfully represented several VCU faculty artists to the greater art world. More than a thousand private donors — including Pam and Bill Royall, Kathi and Steve Markel, Patsy Pettus, and True Luck — raised $37 million toward the $41 million total building cost, but Reynolds led the way and had the vision. “When she had something in her head, she was doggedly determined to make it happen,” Seipel says.
VCU’s on-campus Anderson Gallery had shown noteworthy work over the years, he says, but the building wasn’t handicapped-accessible. (The Anderson recently reopened to showcase student work.) “It’s an old stable turned into an art gallery. The ICA was designed to be something else. It was meant to show new work being done by artists on the cutting or bleeding edge of contemporary art, both local artists and international.”
The museum is a separate entity within the VCU system, with its own $4.1 million annual budget, disconnected from the School of the Arts. That has puzzled some. “The School of the Arts, as the teaching arm of the institution, should be involved in what kind of art they are showing,” says Lorna Wyckoff, founder of Style Weekly and an ICA donor, echoing the sentiments of others interviewed for this story.
“There aren’t a lot of models to look at for this kind of museum,” Seipel maintains. He had originally wanted the ICA to operate under the art school’s umbrella for its first few years as it established itself. “Rhode Island School of Design has a contemporary museum that operates one way, and the University of Pennsylvania has an [ICA] that operates another way ... they’re all different. It’s not a one-size-fits-all for this kind of institution.” This is a complex beast, he stresses. “It has something in the neighborhood of 25 employees and a multi-million-dollar budget. It really is more than the School of the Arts could handle. So it makes sense that it would be connected [directly] to the university.”
The ICA does have close ties to the School of the Arts, Kistler argues. “It’s involved in a substantive way through the involvement of faculty and students.” She points to Corin Hewett’s exhibition last summer, “Shadows Are to Shade,” as one of its triumphs. “He’s an instructor in the sculpture department. And then you have sculpture instructor Guadalupe Maravilla’s exhibition. He’s on VCU faculty, and that show is the first opportunity for his work to be highlighted here, as it should be.”
Maravilla’s “Disease Thrower” installation currently sits dark in the ICA’s loft-like, top-floor True Farr Luck Gallery, the second in an ongoing series of special ICA-commissioned works called “Provocations.” Incorporating drawing, sculpture and music, former Salvadoran refugee Maravilla’s display draws on his own experiences with, as he says, “illness, migration and the anxieties experienced by undocumented peoples.”
“We try to pay attention to the world around us,” Willsdon says. “A lot of projects are commissioned by us, they begin with a conversation with an artist about what can be meaningful to do here and now. We’re aware that the Richmond region has a long and traumatic history. In our programming, we want to be conscious of that history even as we create new things and focus on the future.”
Moon reminds us that all of this is new stuff, for VCU and for Richmond. “I think people are still trying to figure out what’s up with that big building on the corner. So, how do we educate the public as to what this place is and how it correlates to an experience that they’ll want to have? We’re learning now how to do that, still figuring that part out.”
‘No longer pretty pictures on a wall’
The ICA’s 2018 opening exhibition, “Declaration,” was aptly named. The kaleidoscopic multi-artist collection received national attention, most notably for Baltimore artist Paul Rucker’s “Storm in the Time of Shelter,” a collection of deconstructed Ku Klux Klan iconography that included 52 multicolored KKK robes. The provocative piece was acquired by the VMFA for its permanent collection in late 2018.
Rucker’s installation is an important work, says Valerie Cassel Oliver, the VMFA’s Sydney and Frances Lewis family curator of modern and contemporary art. “It allowed for the viewer to understand the persistence of racism in this country.”
The VMFA is in the process of securing a piece featured in the ICA’s recent “Great Force” exhibition, as well. “As the ICA is a noncollecting museum, the VMFA could serve as a repository for its efforts through the collection of works from its exhibition program,” Oliver says. “Certainly, given the focus on contemporary art, many artists featured at the ICA are also artists of interest to my department.”
There’s a good reason the ICA does not collect art, Siepel says. “You’d need triple the space, and you’d need people — preparators, conservators — and a budget to purchase these things. And we already have a great collecting museum here. ... The VMFA does a wonderful job.”
“Declaration,” curated by the ICA’s original founding director, Freiman, was a provocative success, Seipel maintains, but when Freiman stepped down before the opening after three years at the helm, announcing in a statement that she wanted to get back to academic work as a tenured VCU faculty member, Seipel was reluctantly called out of retirement to become interim director. He says that, from the beginning, the ICA’s fare has properly reflected the state of contemporary art.
“This is all new and the kind of work that young artists are doing, focused on content based on current issues of society. It’s not always easy to look at. Like with any contemporary art, you are going to find people who are really passionate about what they’re seeing and people who are confused by what they’re seeing, and they can be looking at the same exhibition.”
That observation is backed up by a sampling of 15 local arts professionals, ICA donors, artists and patrons, many of whom, for various reasons, declined to speak on the record. This pulse-read indicates that the ICA has stirred a range of opinions within the established local arts community, as people use descriptive terms ranging from “remarkable” and “thought-provoking” to “cliquish” and “pretentious.”
One arts patron doesn’t like the fact that “you have to read all of this text to find out what the art is about,” while one artist complains that there hasn’t been enough attention paid to Virginia artists. Several think that the exhibition spaces are too small and that the offerings are too political. “There is avant-garde art out there that is accessible,” says one ICA donor, “but they aren’t hitting the mark on consistently bringing anything in that connects [with me].”
“We’ve really committed to creating visibility and opportunity for artists who have been historically unrepresented.” —Stephanie Smith, ICA chief curator
Suzanne Hall, the retired former chief communications officer at the VMFA, says, “Art is not easy. And this kind of art, contemporary art, is complicated, challenging, multilayered. It’s no longer pretty pictures on a wall.” She has viewed most of the ICA’s exhibitions and has been enthralled. “It’s so much more challenging and rich than I thought it would be,” she says. “I was thinking... it would be a little bit more standard issue in modern contemporary art. But it’s not.”
Kistler agrees. “The offerings that the ICA has presented have been interesting and provocative, she says. “It’s material that is not addressed elsewhere in the region.”
Heather Waters, founding director of the Richmond International Film and Music Festival, helped to curate an institute screening of the Kenyan film “Rifiki” last year. “I think Richmond is fortunate to have an institution like the ICA,” she says. “It has the capability of being a unique forum that serves our greater community in thought-provoking, artistic ways.”
Along with his husband, Mark Reed, Jerry Williams longtime film and theater critic and a past Richmond magazine contributor, was a donor to the ICA building campaign. “We love the space and its unique position right at the ‘gateway’ of the city, and [‘Declaration’] had some interesting work, but all of the shows since then have been less than exciting,” he says. “The art they’ve shown would completely confuse or even turn off people who might wander in off the street and aren’t familiar with the art world.”
“Not all of the work that’s been in there has been spectacular,” Seipel admits. “Some of it has been better than others. But that’s OK. That’s the whole nature of contemporary art. It should be inventive, it should be expressive, and it should keep us on our toes.”
While the national press raves and the hometown crowd debates, Willsdon takes it all with calm acceptance. “Part of the excitement of very, very new art is that we’re all figuring it out together,” he says. “And one thing that’s true of art today maybe more than in the past is that it doesn’t only refer to art history, but is referring to things that are happening in the world right now, in the media, public life, family life.”
One longtime arts administrator with fundraising experience expresses worry about the long-term sustainability of the ICA. “It’s hard to raise money for modern contemporary art, and there isn’t a deep, deep well of donors to draw on. The rich people’s children don’t act like their parents, so everything is going to change ... probably in three months. It’s possible that, in the future, the ICA may have to charge admission.”
A view of the installation “Provocations: Guadalupe Maravilla, ‘Disease Thrower’ ” in the ICA’s True Farr Luck Gallery (Photo by David Hunter Hale courtesy Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University)
Charging Ahead
Keeping admission to the ICA free is integral to its mission, Willsdon says. Most of the ICA’s $4.1 million annual budget comes from VCU, but he says that the eventual goal is independence. The ICA’s new strategic plan sketches out a long-range, multiyear financial course that presents, as Willsdon says, “a kind of path for us to become, through the generosity of many people, hopefully, increasingly independent of the university budget. But that’s going to take a little while.”
Short on financial projections, the ICA’s 16-page strategic plan is an aspirational mission statement that stresses listening to the larger Richmond community, placing a greater emphasis on disseminating material online, and bringing in contemporary work that inspires debate and promotes study. The plan was informed by a visioning process overseen by Brightspot Strategy, a management consulting firm based in New York, and included the ICA’s advisory board, staff, VCU officials and members of the arts community.
There was upheaval last year when Ellwood Thompson’s closed its cafe inside the ICA. “This was a difficult decision to make,” market owner Rick Hood wrote in a press statement. “The cafe was not financially sustainable.” Its replacement is the locally owned Soul ‘n’ Vinegar Cafe. “We are excited for them to continue as our cafe vendor,” Willsdon says. “They are focused on sustainability in the food they serve, and on the community.”
The ICA also let six employees go last year, a move some interpreted as a downsizing. Willsdon says no. “It was part of a restructuring to better meet our operational needs, informed by the strategic plan,” he says. “We are hiring now. The ICA staff will be the same size as before.”
As far as connecting to Richmond, Willsdon and VCU point to data showing that the ICA’s total attendance for 2018 and 2019 is 152,227 and that it reached a demographic not normally seen in area museums. (In comparison, the VMFA reported 507,745 visitors in 2019.)
VCU reports that more than 70% of first-year attendees were under 35 years old, with 50% under 25. Half of the ICA’s 2018 visitors were affiliated with the university, and 80% were Virginia residents. “The crowds look like the city looks,” Siepel says, “and that’s new for Richmond.”
“We’ve really committed to creating visibility and opportunity for artists who have been historically unrepresented — women, LGBTQ [people] and artists of color,” says ICA Chief Curator Smith. In 2021, the ICA will highlight women artists in a multi-part exhibition.
For now, everything is on hold as the museum struggles with when and how it will return from hiatus. But Willsdon is sure that COVID-19’s aftershocks will be felt, seen and heard in contemporary art, and that the ICA will be here to chart the reverberations.
“If you’re an institution that’s meant to be sensitive to the present and to the immediate future, it kind of comes with the territory,” he says. “The question is already on our minds: What kind of programming do we present at the ICA that will be most pertinent to the world we’re going to come back into?”
