vol. 289 / Where Perspectives ShiftExploring and celebrating the place we all love to call home.
VOL. 289 / Where Perspectives Shift
Meet this week’s guest editor, Kristen Cavallo, Executive Director of The Branch Museum of Design. Kristen never planned on becoming a CEO — yet she did, twice. For thirty years, she helped build some of the world’s most recognized creative agencies, including The Martin Agency and MullenLowe Global. After a career spent shaping brands and advancing equity, she left advertising to focus on something just as ambitious: building Virginia’s only museum devoted to design. Now, as Executive Director of The Branch Museum of Design, she’s helping people see how that craft influences the way we live. Inside a 1919 Tudor-Jacobean mansion, the museum explores how design is all around us, from restored motorcycles to woven tapestries to photography that captures moments of change.
And this season, there’s plenty to look forward to. Sit back — you’re in for a special treat as Kristen shares her tips for upcoming events not to miss.
Take it away, Kristen …
A Roaring Twenties Speakeasy
Built in 1919 as the Branch family’s winter home, the house has always been a place for gathering and celebration. On December 10, the museum revives that spirit with cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, live jazz, and a few secrets hidden throughout the house. Guests of the Roaring Twenties Speakeasy will experience the building as it was once lived in. Festive attire encouraged — and don’t forget the password: “Miss Beulah.”
Featured portrait: Branch family descendant Ned Rennolds, painted by Edmund Archer. Oil on canvas, 32” x 40”. Rennolds was also one of the founding members of the Richmond Symphony.
Vitals:
A Roaring Twenties Speakeasy – December 10 / Get tickets / Tell the doorman you’re there to see “Miss Beulah” / 2501 Monument Avenue
The Art of Fashion
Presented with VCUarts, this exhibition brings Christian Siriano and Ashley Longshore together in a bold exchange between fashion and art. Siriano’s red-carpet gowns appear in an immersive runway installation. Longshore’s pop portraits are displayed alongside the gowns, revealing how art and fashion continue to inspire one another.
Vitals:
Presented by VCUarts / January 17, 2026 / 2501 Monument Avenue
Makers Studio
Launching in 2026, a new quarterly series will bring the act of making to the public. The Makers Studio workshops break down the barrier between observer and maker — reinforcing that design isn’t only something to admire, but something to experience.
This is a new phrase, but not a new direction. It’s a reflection of who The Branch Museum has always been. When the Branch House was built in 1919, it was technologically advanced: indoor electricity, an elevator, and a central vacuum. Designed not just to impress, but to push what was possible. Just like the Branch family themselves — John Kerr Branch, Mary Munford, Margaret Glasgow, Zayde Dotts, and Ned Rennolds — champions of progress, equity, and civic access long before those values were widely embraced.
Today, that same spirit fuels The Branch Museum. Through exhibitions, programs, and partnerships, The Branch highlights design that invites visitors to see things differently. It has woven this story into a new logo that was rolled out this year. The angles of the house, tilted on its side, reframe what we see: a “B” becomes a house, a house becomes a “B.” A nod to the toppled monuments that once stood outside its door, a symbol of a city always redefining progress, and an invitation to shift your perspective. The Branch invites you to come be a part of it.
vol. 288 / Art of PlaceExploring and celebrating the place we all love to call home.
VOL. 288 / Art of Place
Meet this week’s guest editor, S. Ross Browne, a celebrated Richmond artist whose work has enriched the River City with depth and color for decades. Born in Mount Vernon, New York, Ross studied Communication Art and Design at VCU and The Corcoran School of Art. His paintings have been featured in more than 75 exhibitions across the U.S. and abroad, with works in the permanent collections of the VMFA, the Valentine Museum, the Black History Museum of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, and The JXN Project.
Ross has received honors from the VMFA, the Black History Museum of Virginia, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, CultureWorks, and the Gottlieb Foundation, among others. You can spot murals by Ross across Virginia—from the Children’s Hospital at VCU Health to Virginia State University and beyond. He was also an inaugural artist in the acclaimed Mending Walls Mural Project.
As an educator, Ross has shared his passion through therapeutic art programs at VCU Health and through youth initiatives such as Art 180 and the Fresh Air Fund.
This week, Ross joins us for a special issue of Here Weekly with his tips for exploring and celebrating this place we all love to call home. Take it away, Ross...
Richmond’s Arboreal Treasures
Compared to many of the cities I have visited around the world and those I have lived in across the U.S., Richmond is wonderfully walkable, with many urban neighborhoods just a short sojourn away from the almost bucolic. I think the proximity to nature that living in Manchester provides is truly a moment of zen amid what can be the miasma of city living. I love to raft, fish, and take long hikes and bike rides along the many wooded paths while identifying flora and fauna with friends. It always amazes me how quickly the sounds of the city melt away. One of my favorite shorter walks is along the floodwall to the west of Manchester, under the Manchester Bridge, across the Potterfield Bridge, and onto Brown’s Island—past the amphitheater at Tredegar, under the Lee Bridge, where the suspended footbridge provides breathtaking panoramas of the river (especially at sunset)—then onto Belle Isle, where the many trails can lead to sylvan tranquility, sparsely interrupted by fellow hikers and bikers and the distant, muted trumpeting of a lumbering locomotive.
A gem-blue robin’s egg nestled in a brown dry thatch is the Visual Arts Center of Richmond. I often find myself depleted from the day-after-day hard hustle of being a working artist. It is one of the few jobs that requires grueling manual labor, mental perspicacity, and unflinching vulnerability as a prerequisite. So it would almost seem anathema to logic that when I teach two painting classes in a row for three hours each, such an endeavor is energizing and soul freshening.
My students come from all backgrounds and age groups with one overarching thing in common. They want to paint. They want to create. They want to be artists. The obvious caveat emptor aside, our shared enthusiasm for the craft is energizing in an unfathomable way. I forget all of my troubles and aches and pains and try my best to ignite a spark of inspiration in my students. They often return session after session for years so we come to understand one another and the complex mathematics of art.
Now this is just my introduction to intermediate/advanced acrylic painting classes. VisArts has so many art, design, writing, woodworking, jewelry making, pottery, and photography classes I couldn’t possibly name them all without continuing to violate the guest editor word count. It’s a wonderful place with supportive and kind staff and opportunities for professional artists. Treat yourself. Go there.
The continuing exhibition Bodies of Labor, Hands That Built a Nation at the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia is a must-experience. It is a group show featuring Virginia artists’ interpretations of what labor means to them and African Americans’ contributions to that effort. The BHM is a thought-provoking, whirlwind tour of cultural enrichment and enlightenment on any day. This particular exhibition, however, is a tour de force of self-reflection, skillful creative elasticity, and cultural introspection.
In this political climate, we are often regaled with the greatness of American ingenuity and industry without giving due credit to all of the American peoples who helped lay the foundation and were co-architects of the edifice shaping its history. As an artist who is featured in this exhibition, I can truly say—without bias or hubris—that the work in this show is, as my brother Kent would say, outstanding.
Curated by Mary Lauderdale, Director of Curatorial Services, it would probably behoove anyone to ask her for a tour of the exhibition, although with her busy schedule that’s probably a long shot. Shameless plug: the painting I have in this museum exhibition is In Defiance of Caste, 2024, 60” x 60”, oil on linen.
Catch the latest mural by Ross, recently completed on the corner of 10th and Hull Streets as part of a new series of enhancements to the Manchester neighborhood. The project, made possible through a partnership with Venture Richmond, Manchester Alliance, and the Hull Street Merchants Association, is part of a community effort to celebrate creativity and spark momentum in one of Richmond’s most historic corridors. Ross says his mural, measuring 20’ x 30’, is his ode to Afrofuturism.
vol. 287 / Top ChefExploring and celebrating the place we all love to call home.
VOL. 287 / Top Chef
Meet this week's guest editor, Brittanny Anderson. A born-and-raised Richmonder, Brittanny is the celebrated chef and owner of Metzger Bar & Butchery, Bar Buoy, Black Lodge, and The Pink Room. She is a two-time semi-finalist for the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic and has been named StarChefs’ Mid-Atlantic Restaurateur of the Year.
On television, you can spot her competing on Bravo’s Top Chef (Season 18) and Food Network’s Tournament of Champions, Iron Chef America, Last Bite Hotel, 24 in 24, and Triple Threat, where she took down Bobby Flay’s Titans. Her restaurants and recipes have been featured in Food & Wine, Garden & Gun, Elle, and Bon Appétit.
This week, we’re honored to have Brittanny share her favorite ways to explore and celebrate this delicious city we all love to call home.
Take it away, Brittanny ...
Volunteer with Beyond Boundaries
One of my favorite groups to work with in Richmond, Beyond Boundaries, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to guiding participants with disabilities, veterans, underserved youth, and recovery programs on outdoor adventures. Help someone learn to fish, kayak, or rock climb! Shep Roeper, Executive Director of Beyond Boundaries, has created a really special group that shares our beautiful outdoors and wildlife here in Richmond with those who have had limited access to it in the past, and it is truly special to get to be a part of it!
Hook up with one of the terrific guides at Current Culture Fly, or go hang with Richmond Fly Women and learn to tie your own flies, cast a rod, and ultimately land a monster right here in the city! Current Culture Fly is a guide service working out of Richmond that takes pride in making fly fishing accessible and fun. And Richmond Fly Women is a community for women anglers of all skill levels who just love to fish. Established in 2025, the group’s mission is to see more women on the water, solo and together. Join the group for social and active meetups where participants fish, tie flies, and learn from one another.
Visit my favorite neighborhood in Richmond and take a walk filled with history, cocktails, and yummy snacks! Visit brunch spots like Alewife or Metzger, sit on the patio at The Hill Café and chat with the neighborhood regulars, grab a slice at Pizza Bones, browse the Italian goodies at Giorno Market, and then take in the gorgeous architecture of historic Church Hill.
Richmond chef and restaurateur Brittanny Anderson recently set sail on a new culinary adventure with the opening of Bar Buoy, a Chesapeake Bay–inspired eatery in Scott’s Addition. Drawing on her family lineage of watermen, Brittanny has brought casual, fun, beach-shack vibes to Richmond’s dining scene. Think raw bar, steamers, crab cakes, beer-battered cod, Chesapeake Bay shrimp toast, and plenty of boat drinks and nostalgic cocktails like fancy crushes and buttered popcorn rum and Cokes, plus a curated non-alcoholic soda lineup. Head over to 3200 Rockbridge St. for a little bit of the Bay right here in the River City.
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