Arts & Entertainment
Weekend Radar: Old Crow Medicine Show, Armenian Food Festival, Art of El Salvador, RVA Brunch Weekend, Afro Fest
Fall festival season is starting to warm up. Get out there and enjoy.

Old Crow Medicine Show at Maymont
September 9th
If you go expecting crows or medicines you’re going to be disappointed. If you go to see a talented band in an awesome setting you’re going to be happy.
@crowmedicine – what can we say! We can’t wait to celebrate your new incredible album #PaintThisTown at @musicatmaymont this summer! See you September 9th!
CMA award winner and Guit-Steel legend @juniorbrown will be opening the show!
Armenian Food Festival at St. James Armenian Church
September 9-10th
As the name implies the focus is on food and that food is awesome. Kabobs for the win always. The website link below will take you to the menu so can plan your weekend dining.
Join St. James Armenian Church for the 62nd annual Armenian Food Festival on Friday, September 9 – Saturday, September 10! Come experience one of Richmond’s oldest cultural festivals. Share our delicious food, wine and beer, and listen to our music. Come tour our beautiful church and learn more about the Armenian Orthodox religion.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ArmenianFoodFestivalRichmond/
Website: www.armenianfoodfestival.com
Free admission.
Family Day – Celebrate the Art of Latin America: El Salvador at VMFA
September 10th
Learn about the wonderful art of El Salvador.
Our next Family Day is coming up soon! This season’s theme is “Celebrate the Art of Latin America: El Salvador.” Join us at the museum from 11 am to 3 pm on Sep 10 to take part in free art activities, workshops, collaborative projects, performances, and more.
Family Day is the perfect opportunity to gather the whole family together and experience the richness of cultures from around the world.
RSVP and stay tuned for updates in the coming weeks!
Visit the following link to learn more about VMFA Family Days: https://bit.ly/3wI7MVk
VMFA Family Day is sponsored by Genworth and Collegiate School.
Richmond Brunch Weekend at Various Area Restaurants
September 10-11th
I’m not a brunch person. I like meals to stay firmly in their lanes. Don’t cross the meal streams. I also know I’m alone in this and supporting Richmond SPCA is a darn good reason to at least pretend to be a brunch person.
We are THRILLED to announce the return of our favorite event, #RVAbrunchweekend!
Join us September 10-11 for our fifth annual RVA Brunch Weekend as we come together as a community to support our local restaurants and this year’s charity partner, the Richmond SPCA!
To participate, all you have to do is enjoy brunch at one (or more) of our participating restaurants on September 10-11. Our gracious restaurant partners will then share a portion of proceeds with the Richmond SPCA. Restaurants are still feeling the impact from the pandemic, so please be nice, tip well, smile and leave an additional donation of any size for the Richmond SPCA!
We are excited to have some great RVA restaurants on-board including:
Home Team Grill
Pinky’s
Bari at Brambly Park
Industrial Taphouse
River City Roll
Blue Atlas
The Savory Grain
Postbellum
Fall Line Kitchen & Bar
The Speakeasy Grill
The Shaved Duck Restaurant
Bocata Arepa Bar
Maple Bourbon
Carytown Baker’s Crust
Short Pump Baker’s Crust
Kreggers at Hand
Tarrant’s West
SB’s Love Shack
Bar Solita
We also have great Richmond food trucks on the list:
1115 Mobile Kitchen
Woodhead’s Grill
If you’re a Richmond-based restaurant interested in participating or a business who might want to sponsor the event, check out this link: https://www.astoldoverbrunch.com/get-involvedLearn more about the event at www.richmondbrunchweekend.com.Make sure you follow us on Instagram, as we’re bringing back plenty of giveaways leading up to Richmond Brunch Weekend: @RichmondBrunch: https://www.instagram.com/richmondbrunch/.Want to make a donation to the Richmond SPCA? We’re aiming to fundraise $5,000 by the end of the weekend. Make your donation (no amount is too small!) here: https://richmondspca.org/events/richmond-brunch-weekend/
Afro Fest at Dogwood Dell
September 10th
I don’t much about this one but it seems worth checking out.

Arts & Entertainment
12th annual Richmond Bluegrass Jam set for April 22nd benefitting military veterans and families
The free, family-friendly event features 20 of the region’s best bluegrass and Americana bands playing on multiple stages for nine straight hours, all to raise money for military veterans and their families through two local organizations.

The Richmond Bluegrass Jam will return for its twelfth year on April 22, 2023, from 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., at American Legion Post 354, on the banks of the James River in Midlothian, Va. This is the second year the Jam is being held at the American Legion Post after a previous multi-year run at the Cultural Arts Center at Glen Allen.
The free, family-friendly event features 20 of the region’s best bluegrass and Americana bands playing on multiple stages for nine straight hours, all to raise money for military veterans and their families through two local organizations: the Richmond Fisher House, a home away from home for the families of veterans and active-duty soldiers recuperating at Richmond’s McGuire Veterans Medical Center; and Liberation Veteran Services, which provides housing and care for veterans in crisis.
Fans are strongly encouraged to make tax-deductible donations to the Richmond Fisher House and Liberation Veteran Services at the event or online at rvabluegrassjam.com. Over the past eleven years, the event has raised more than $204,000 for the families of military men and women.
The bands—all of which play at no charge in support of the Richmond Fisher House and Liberation Veteran Services—include Tara Mills Band, Cary Street Ramblers, Josh Grigsby and County Line, Cook County Bluegrass, Slack Family Bluegrass Band, and more.
The event also will feature local craft beverages and Richmond’s food trucks.
“We’re excited to bring the Richmond Bluegrass Jam back to American Legion Post 354 after a successful event last year,” says Tim Gundlach, president of RVA Bluegrass Jam, Inc., the event’s organizer. “This new location along the James River is not only inspiring, but also further connects the Jam with our military community. This year, we’re expanding our support of our military veterans and their families by raising money for both the Richmond Fisher House and Liberation Veteran Services. We’re proud to partner with these two extraordinary organizations.”
In addition to listening to the scheduled bands, attendees are encouraged to bring their own instruments. Several open jam areas will be available, as well as an instrument check station.
American Legion Post 354 is located in Midlothian, Va. Parking will be available at nearby James River High School, 3700 James River Rd., with free shuttles running throughout the day.
More information at rvabluegrassjam.com and on Facebook at facebook.com/rvabluegrassjam.
Arts & Entertainment
Husband-and-wife duo bringing new restaurant concept to former Mill on MacArthur space
The deal closed Monday for an undisclosed amount. Sperity Real Estate Ventures’ Nathan Hughes worked the deal.

From Richmond BizSense:
Barely a month after its closure, The Mill on MacArthur restaurant space in the Bellevue neighborhood is set to be reborn.
Husband-and-wife duo Rawleigh and Jaya Easley purchased The Mill’s lease at 4023 MacArthur Ave. and its equipment and are planning to open a new restaurant in its place called Neighbor.
The deal closed Monday for an undisclosed amount. Sperity Real Estate Ventures’ Nathan Hughes worked the deal.
Arts & Entertainment
Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU’s bevy of spring exhibitions run the gamut
An international group exhibition studying abstraction and a monumental new public artwork by Navine G. Dossos for ICA’s iconic facade kick off the 2023 spring season

The Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University (ICA at VCU) has announced its Spring 2023 season, featuring a group exhibition and corresponding public art installation, both organized by ICA Senior Curator and Director of Programs, Sarah Rifky, as well as hybrid performances as part of the Test Pattern series. Additionally, Misread Unread Read Reread Misread Unread Reread (MURRMUR), an ongoing research framework that opened in Fall 2022 with the self-publishing pavillion by Rafael Domenech, will continue through 2023 with further iterations and programs by artists and educators.
Installed across the ICA’s multiple galleries and spaces, So it appears, runs through July 16, 2023. The exhibition features nineteen artists from around the world whose works appear inscrutable at first glance—but upon closer examination, tangible, acutely urgent narratives begin to emerge. Grappling with the paradox of how to represent the unrepresentable, the collected artists have surfaced abstraction as a visual strategy—a tactic for encoding, encrypting, and indexing otherwise invisible realities and disasters, as well as speculative futures. Formal abstraction, color fields and conceptual minimalism act as repositories for stories of carcerality, injustice, enslavement, the invisibility of migrants, environmental racism, and sonic warfare, among other realities.
Though created at different times (from 2004 to the present) and in vastly disparate contexts across fourteen different countries, the works presented in So it appears reveal surprising affinities in their approaches, subtleties and associations. Seen together, they invite visitors to reflect on the interconnectedness of the manifold global crises.
Featured artists include Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Monira Al Qadiri, Alexander Apóstol, Navine G. Dossos, Torkwase Dyson, Basmah Felemban, Žilvinas Kempinas, Agnieszka Kurant, Dinh Q. Lê, Jeewi Lee, John Menick, Novo (Reynier Leyva Novo), Trevor Paglen, Walid Raad, Tomás Saraceno, Pak Sheung-Chuen, and Levester Williams. Tasmania-based artist Tricky Walsh and New York–based audio artist and producer Sharon Mashihi will also be in residence throughout the exhibition’s run and will produce new works to be presented on April 21st on the occasion of the ICA’s fifth anniversary.
Concurrently, artist Navine G. Dossos will present a public work, McLean (2023), on ICA at VCU’s iconic N. Belvidere facade, on view for one year, February 24, 2023 – January 7, 2024. For this visually spectacular work, the artist adapted one hundred gouache paintings she created between 2018 and 2020, each panel in response to a news article published in the wake of the heinous murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi—a resident of McLean, Virginia—in October 2019.
Through this series, Dossos has developed a lexicon of symbols that stand in for the absent picturing of the case. The work is rendered in Dossos’ double take on Islamic and geometric arts, yet instead of lines and shapes, Dossos composes her intricate work through graphic icons, a representation of the narrative thread, encompassing multiple forms of technology, different individuals, nation-states, law enforcement agencies and human rights organizations. McLean is developed from Dossos’ project No Such Organization (2020) and which will be shown as part of So it appears.
Continuing from the 2022 Fall season is Misread Unread Read Re-read Misread Unread Re-read (MURRMUR), a ten-month curatorial framework and publishing program committed to expanding how we think about exhibitions and what it means to read, publish and distribute art, books and ideas. Developed in conversation with participating artists and educators, MURRMUR seeks to break down, massage, map and circulate information through experiments, improvisations and alternative curriculums. MURRMUR is organized by Senior Curator and Director of Programs, Sarah Rifky, and Assistant Curator of Commerce and Publications, Egbert Vongmalaithong.
MURRMUR presents two new programs in April 2023 and one new installation of research, references and a materials library designed by Sam Taylor in February 2023, organized by Egbert Vongmalaithong, ICA Assistant Curator of Commerce and Publications. On view February 24–July 16, 2023, in the ICA Shop + Cafe, Taylor’s installation provides objects that can be activated with a tap of your phone to reveal media and texts, providing insight on MURRMUR and the upcoming iterations.
One of the new programs is between a book and a soft place, a new commission by new media artist and design educator nicole killian. Designed as a playful learning environment, visitors are invited into this play-space to consider various ways for language to be carried out, embodied, and “queered”: we wear the language, we dance the language and we hold it in our hands. An intervention on the ICA’s 2nd floor, between a book and a soft place, can be considered a study on killian’s research questions around queering design education.
MURRMUR also presents SIT(UATION), a mutable seating and display system by artist Riley Hooker in collaboration with architect Nick Meehan. The project grows from a desire to center the body in the act of reading and the structure can be understood as plasmatic—resisting fixed linearity and promoting intellectual promiscuity. The design pulls from 1960s radical architecture, post-modern seating design a-la Peter Opsvik and Terje Ekstrøm, educational methods developed for neurodivergent students, embodiment and mindfulness practices, and anarchic political theories. The research and process behind these programs will be presented in February 2023 and on view from April 21–July 16, 2023.
In September 2022, MURRMUR opened with The Medium is the Massage, a new commission by artist Rafael Domenech. Visitors to The Medium is the Massage can become authors, readers, editors, and publishers when they enter this continuously transforming publication-pavilion. The living space turns the art gallery from a site of passive reception into a site of active production, right up until it closes on July 16, 2023, when the public will be invited to take the project’s remains out of the gallery and into their homes.
TEST PATTERN
Curated by ICA Assistant Curator and Producer David Riley, Test Pattern is a hybrid performance series inspired by the legacy of visionary public-access TV programs and alternative video movements in the US. The series invites artists to turn the ICA auditorium into an experimental production studio for week-long residencies, during which they collaborate with members of the local community to create a live performance and internet broadcast. Launched in March 2022, past Test Pattern performers include DeForrest Brown Jr., madison moore, SHAWNÉ MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY, Moor Mother, jaamil olawale kosoko, Kinlaw and Dorian Wood.
Test Pattern returns to the ICA auditorium on Friday, April 7, with a performance by vocalist, composer, and performance artist Holland Andrews. Their work focuses on the abstraction of operatic and extended-technique voice to build cathartic and dissonant soundscapes. Andrews arranges music for voice, clarinet and electronics and frequently highlights themes surrounding vulnerability and healing. In addition to creating solo work, Andrews develops and performs soundscapes for dance, theater and film. Their work has toured nationally and internationally with artists such as Bill T. Jones, Dorothee Munyaneza, Will Rawls and poet Demian Dinéyazhi.