Carmenita Higginbotham
Dean Of The School Of The Arts, VCU
At the busiest intersection in downtown Richmond lie the two most pressing challenges – and greatest opportunities – for Carmenita Higginbotham.
As dean of VCU’s School of the Arts, Higginbotham has been overseeing the integration of the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) into her school, a process that was finalized in July. Housed in the striking Markel Building at the southwest corner of Belvidere and Broad Streets, the ICA has been operating without an executive director since Dominic Willsdon left the post in January.
Then in April, final plans for the construction of the CoStar Center for Arts and Innovation (CCAI), to be located across the street from the ICA at the intersection’s southeast corner, were announced. Higginbotham will be one of the leaders guiding the development and direction of the new center that is estimated to cost $253 million.
“Yes, I’m going to be busy,” says Higginbotham. “And I welcome that.
“We all have so many elements of our life that we balance. One can view it as something that limits you or terrifies you. Other folks view it as an opportunity, a chance to be part of something that, in many ways, is history-making.”
Arriving at VCU in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic, Higginbotham knows some things about historic challenges. She looks back on her first year here with optimism about how art can be responsive to tumultuous circumstances.
“[The pandemic] caused the scholars here to open their minds to new ways of creation and of communicating,” she says. “It demonstrated to me the resiliency of this city and of our students. I think we were all left very fragile from the experience but, in many ways, a lot stronger.”
Higginbotham came to Richmond after more than 15 years at University of Virginia where she served as the chair of its art department. She is an in-demand art historian who has appeared on CNN and in two documentaries on Walt Disney. Her specialty seems to align well with this moment.
“I love being an art historian because it caters to my interest in historical patterns and seeing the connective tissue,” she says. “I was always the person who saw and appreciated interdisciplinary intersections. I was the person who saw that communication, whether one does it in books or on stage or through design, is something that binds us all together through creativity.”
Intersections are a consistent theme as she talks about the major developments that are impacting her school. “Innovative ideas require the intersection of excellence, creativity, and a willingness to be a risk taker,” Higginbotham says. “That’s very much part of the ethos of the School of the Arts and is also an ethos at the ICA, so it is a natural pairing.”
When she started at VCU, there was no way she could have foreseen both the ICA and the CCAI ending up under her leadership, but she feels energized by the challenges ahead. “It’s exciting to imagine these two endeavors at the busiest intersection in the city of Richmond,” she says.
“It’s such a bold statement about the critical position of art – art in thinking, art in design, art in scholarship – and it’s one of the elements that makes Richmond such a spectacular and unique place.”—David Timberline
Ma Kong
Artistic Director, Richmond Ballet
Maya Erhardt
Executive Director, Richmond Ballet
The 2024-25 season of Richmond Ballet is filled with beginnings.
Ma Cong ascends to the role of artistic director after working four years as assistant AD under Stoner Winslett, the company’s founding artistic director. Maya Erhardt assumes the role of executive director, a new position created to focus on administration and fundraising.
Also, September’s “Studio Finale” will be the final performance in the company’s 250-seat Canal Street Studio Theatre. Starting in spring 2025, the company will use the renovated Leslie Cheek Theater in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, which offers a small orchestra pit and seating for 500, double the previous location.
“We are looking toward the future, thinking about how to engage the community, to have even bigger dreams,” Ma says. “We’re thinking about the long term.”
For Erhardt, a Richmond native who has worked in arts fundraising and administration for two decades, joining Richmond Ballet is an opportunity she couldn’t resist. “This is a chance to grow [the ballet] at a pivotal moment, under Ma’s artistic vision” she says. “I’m so inspired by him, and the dancers adore him.”
Erhardt has been steeped in Richmond’s arts scene, with a mother who is a VCU Arts graduate, and years of following and attending arts performances. She’s also worked at VCU’s Institute of Contemporary Art and spent a decade at the VMFA – though she didn’t mastermind the new partnership. “I was aware of the conversations [between Winslett and VMFA director Alex Nyerges], but not instrumental,” Erhardt says.
Both Erhardt and Ma hope the move to a larger space will enable them to attract additional audiences and financial support. “For the last five to 10 years, all ballet organizations have been competitive, because we try to attract the best dancers, which means offering competitive salaries,” Ma says.
He credits his mother, who put him onstage in front of a crowd of 3,000 when he was 3, for helping him find his life’s work: “She was a big supporter of mine,” he says. “She knew my entire life would be connected with dance.” After training at the Beijing Dance Academy and dancing with National Ballet of China, Ma came to the United States and joined Tulsa Ballet as a dancer, soon becoming principal. As he was nearing the end of his stage career, he turned to choreography and became Tulsa Ballet’s resident choreographer.
He also developed a presence as an independent choreographer, which ultimately led to his partnership with Winslett and Richmond Ballet. Ma’s first choreography for Richmond Ballet came in 2009, when he participated in the New Works Festival, a showcase featuring choreography from emerging talent.
“It’s so important to see and experience the voices that creators can have,” he says, noting that this fall, the ballet company will perform his eleventh piece choreographed specifically for a Richmond debut. “We have to continue to provide opportunities for the next generation, so they have the tools and imagination to continue to create,” Ma adds. “The arts cannot die.” —Paula Peters Chambers
Ant The Symbol
Hip-hop artist, producer
The accolades for hip-hop producer Anthony Gillison, also known as Ant The Symbol, are stacking up. He’s been shortlisted twice for the Newlin Music Prize, which honors the best full-length album from the Richmond-Petersburg area, most recently for 2023’s “I Know Who I Am.” Earlier this year, he was named best hip-hip artist or group in Style Weekly’s Best of Richmond poll, an honor he calls “a landmark on my journey of growth in this music scene.”
But get to know Gillison and you’ll find it’s the growth of others—and of the community surrounding him—that he’s most passionate about. “There are so many dope artists around here that deserve to be on a stage regularly,” he says.
He’s no stranger to the stage himself, though his first experiences with stagecraft were in the theater. He attended St. Christopher’s School and took theater courses from middle school through his time at Virginia Wesleyan University. After freshman year, he moved back to Richmond and shifted focus to music, supplying rappers with beats starting in 2007. Shortly thereafter, he was booking shows and putting performers he liked in the same room. “Sometimes, honestly, I’m putting together a show because I want to see this group of people performing together.”
Gillison’s impact in this area has expanded since signing with Richmond label Shockoe Records in 2023. That year marked hip-hop’s 50th anniversary, and Shockoe co-founder Craig Martin approached Gillison about curating a concert in celebration. Held in August at the Hippodrome, the RVA Rapper’s Delight showcase was a resounding success, with performances by local standouts like Nickelus F, Noah-O and Radio B, capped off by an onstage proclamation by Mayor Levar Stoney naming Friday, Aug. 11 as “Richmond Hip-Hop Day.”
“To have the mayor get up there and declare such a holiday in the city is very moving for me as the curator,” Gillison says. “And for the whole hip-hop culture around here.”
And Gillison isn’t slowing down. He was tapped to organize a follow-up showcase as part of this year’s Richmond Music Week festivities, and earlier in the summer joined a panel discussion among musicians, artists, and DJs in conjunction with “Virginia is for Music Lovers: An Exploration of Virginia’s Black Excellence in Music” at the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia. As he looks across Richmond’s growing music scene, he praises the unity, and that “people are starting to be a lot more receptive to hip-hop being a big thing in this city.”
“There were a lot of different venues that would stonewall us for a multitude of reasons,” he says. “That’s starting to change now.”
His own music builds outward from the genre, fluidly incorporating R&B, soul and house while attracting a who’s who of Richmond collaborators. “I Know Who I Am” enlisted standout singers like Sam Reed and Erin Lunsford, respected rappers like Michael Millions and Chance Fischer, and production assistance from Butcher Brown keyboardist DJ Harrison. Gillison is eyeing 2025 for the release of his next album, and in the meantime, he’s enjoying the big transition to fatherhood and married life.
Of course, he’s also looking forward to more live music. “I’m just going to be going out to shows,” he says, “seeing the artists I love, finding new artists, too.” —Davy Jones
For more information, visit antthesymbol.com.
Ian C. Hess
Artist, entrepreneur
Ian Hess is on a mission. He wants to transform an open space beneath the Manchester Bridge into the city’s first public art park.
Thirteen years ago, he came here for VCU’s painting and printmaking program. The city’s culturally rich art scene kept him here. He co-founded Endeavor, a gallery run by artists, and still owns an art supply store, named Supply, at 320 W. Broad St. More recently, he launched Little Giant Society, a nonprofit dedicated to cultivating a diverse arts community “by providing essential support, resources and training.”
For too long, he’s heard the same questions from artists: How do I get my first mural? Where can I paint without getting in trouble? How do I get involved in the community? Hess thinks a public art park would help.
In 2021, he was staying in Amsterdam with friend, Nils Westergard, an internationally known street artist who created some of Richmond’s most memorable murals. Hess would often hang out at Flevopark, a public park where “anyone and everyone of all skill levels can paint without fear of prosecution,” he says. He painted alongside more skilled artists and learned something every time. “Why doesn’t Richmond, known for its arts nationally, have anything like this?” he asked himself.
Hess, along with friends, architect Katie Cortez and Benjamin White, began gathering letters of support and media attention for the park initiative. At press time, the effort was still building steam. Hess estimates costs for the park at $455,000, and the project still faces the hurdle of city support. He notes that it has the support of Sixth District City Councilmember Ellen Robertson, the Manchester Alliance neighborhood association, and Brantley Tyndall, director of Bike Walk RVA at Sports Backers, which is leading conceptual development and advocacy for the Fall Line trail. Tyndall says that the Fall Line vision plan outlined a framework of ideas that includes spaces for community art.
“Ian’s concept fits nicely into this framework and is located directly adjacent to the proposed and partially funded alignment for the Fall Line through Manchester and across the Manchester Bridge,” Tyndall explains. “We hope this effort will lead to a trailside experience for some of the 3 million annual users expected on the Fall Line when it is complete. The Glick Peace Walk in Indianapolis and the D.C. Walls mural project in NoMa are great examples of high-quality, community-borne trailside art along primary model projects for the Fall Line, the Indianapolis Cultural Trail and the Metropolitan Branch Trail.”
It’s easy to see how much Hess wants the park to happen.
“Between my business and personal craft, [art] is my every day in one way or another,” he says. “Whether that means stocking shipments of over 100 colors of paint, spending hours tirelessly grinding in the studio, or curating and organizing exhibitions at galleries around Richmond, I am an artist and I love what I do.” —Brent Baldwin
Klaus Schuller
Managing director, Virginia Repertory Theatre
As their plane descended into Richmond on their first visit here, Klaus Schuller’s partner, Alina Bayer, asked him to move so she could look out the window.
“She said she wanted to get a good look at our new home,” remembers Schuller. “She had a gut feeling.”
Schuller came to town interviewing for the job of managing director of Virginia Repertory Theatre, central Virginia’s largest professional theater. It’s a position held for decades by one of the company’s cofounders, Phil Whiteway, who was pushed out of it last year. In July, Virginia Rep announced that, after its nationwide search, Schuller had been hired.
“From the moment we landed, it was very clear that Richmond punches way above its weight when it comes to the arts, with the number of museums and performing arts companies here,” he says. “The city has a thriving scene far above and beyond what you would expect from its population. I think that’s very exciting.”
Schuller certainly knows about thriving scenes, with years enmeshed in both the Chicago and Toronto arts communities.
After growing up in rural Illinois, he attended DePaul University, then studied film and television production at Northwestern. He marks the start of his “real” career in 1997 when he took a job as a stage manager with the fabled improv comedy enterprise, The Second City. Schuller worked his way up the ranks at the Chicago headquarters until he was asked to take over as executive director of the company’s Canadian operations, a position he held from 2005 to 2017.
“It was a fascinating place to work,” Schuller says. “It’s much more multifaceted than people see from the outside.” He oversaw their live theater, corporate services and television operations, in addition to the company’s huge educational apparatus.
Schuller also acted as producer for celebrity events and television specials featuring members of the original SCTV cast and other famous alumni, including Martin Short, Eugene Levy and Tina Fey. “It was a blast,” he says.
Since 2018, Schuller has been executive director for Randolph Entertainment in Chicago, the producers of Cabaret ZaZou, a world-class Cirque du Soleil-style variety show. The sale of the company last year prompted him to start looking for new opportunities.
In announcing the hire, Virginia Rep foregrounded Schuller’s work developing new performance spaces, including venues in Toronto, Cleveland, Las Vegas, and a “forgotten” historic space in Chicago where Cabaret ZaZou performs. That emphasis seems to relate to the efforts Virginia Rep is making developing its new Center for Arts and Education north of the city.
“It’s become an area of specialty for me, but it emerged more organically than intentionally,” Schuller says. “I think they were looking for someone who had a strong background in managing people and processes, and a history of representing organizations with a lot of passion, and that’s certainly who I am.”
Though Virginia Rep has been dealing with numerous organizational changes lately, Schuller says the overall challenge it faces is a common one among performing arts companies. “We’re competing with inertia and with someone’s very comfortable sofa,” he says. “We have to sort of retrain people to appreciate the wonder and beauty of going out and being part of an audience.
“I’d really love for the people of Richmond and surrounding communities to understand that Virginia Rep is Richmond’s premier professional theater company. It is by, of and for the people of Richmond, and that’s why you should care: because it’s yours.” —Rich Griset
Editor’s note: Since this feature came out last month, Style Weekly broke a news story about Virginia Rep facing a $600,000 shortfall that could mean they would have to shutter their doors. The dire financial situation was discerned by Schuller not even two months into his tenure as managing director. But they were able to raise the funds in just over 10 days by receiving money from over 1,300 donors, 70% of which had never given donations before, as well as foundations and local businesses. This week, they held a town hall to thank the donors and answer questions from the community on Oct. 7.
Kaitlin Paige Longoria
Artistic director, 5th Wall Theatre
If its most recent show is a sign of things to come, 5th Wall Theatre is in very good hands.
In March, the local theater company staged Philip Ridley’s “Radiant Vermin,” a pitch-black comedy satirizing the housing crisis. The play was suggested to 5th Wall’s board of directors by recent Richmond transplant Kaitlin Paige Longoria, who went on to co-star in the company’s production. This May, 5th Wall announced that Longoria would be the company’s new artistic director.
Founded in 2013 by Carol Piersol and Billy Christopher Maupin, 5th Wall stopped producing plays when the pandemic hit. Its hiatus continued after Piersol, who also co-founded the Firehouse Theatre, was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2021. Piersol died last year at the age of 71; 5th Wall and the Firehouse joined forces that September to rename the Firehouse’s stage in her honor.
Longoria, a native of San Antonio, previously spent seven years in New York City working as a film, TV and stage actress before moving to Richmond. She was a resident artist with the city’s New Light Theater Project and did a two-year intensive at the William Esper Studio, which teaches the Meisner technique of acting.
In June 2023, Longoria met with Morrie Piersol, Carol’s widower, and agreed to help 5th Wall co-produce Steven Dietz’ play “Lonely Planet” with the Firehouse in honor of Carol.
This summer, after being named 5th Wall’s artistic director, Longoria announced the company’s first season in years. “H*tler’s Tasters,” which opens in October, is a dark comedy by Michelle Kholos Brooks about the women who tasted Adolph Hitler’s food to ensure it wasn’t poisoned.
Longoria was cast in the first New York staging of the play and served as a producer. Based on true events, Longoria says the play speaks to our time, referring to it as “‘Mean Girls’ meets the Third Reich.”
Next March, 5th Wall will stage “Sanctuary City,” Martyna Majok’s drama about two teenagers who come to America seeking asylum from their home countries.
In choosing these plays, Longoria says she wants to continue 5th Wall’s “focus on stories that comment on the human condition,” as well as highlight underrepresented playwrights.
Next spring, Longoria hopes to remount 5th Wall’s Porch Plays series where actors perform theatrical scenes from the porch of a house; the series had its genesis in the pandemic.
Longoria says she hopes to add a third show to 5th Wall’s season next summer and has reached out to local playwrights about staging workshops of new plays.—Rich Griset
Elizabeth Dolan Wright
Founder and board member of Common Wealth Public Art Fund
Elizabeth Dolan Wright and her family returned to her hometown of Richmond from Chicago in 2019, just in time to witness history. After the Confederate monuments began to fall, and The New York Times praised the transformed, graffiti-covered Robert E. Lee statue as the most influential work of protest art since World War II, she and her husband grew inspired.
“It was such a pivotal and exciting time to be back,” Wright recalls. “There was interest in supporting local artists and national, or international artists, that come to Richmond to install temporary or permanent artwork that, hopefully, will spark good dialogue and unify folks instead of being divisive.”
In 2023, she started the Common Wealth Public Art Fund (CWPAF) at the Community Foundation of Greater Richmond. The fund aims to leverage private philanthropy and partner with artists, nonprofits, and local government to bring more art to public spaces in Virginia. Their first project, “The Hole Truth” by local muralist and sculptor Mickael Broth, was established in front of the Valentine Museum early last summer, on a public sidewalk.
Wright, a Richmond native and Collegiate School graduate who formerly worked in museum administration at the Art Institute of Chicago, says she’s never been an artist but has always been a patron of the arts. While she and her husband have other philanthropic interests, CWPAF has emerged as the most important.
“The struggle I’m seeing now is, if I want to invest in an artist, the fund itself cannot be activated for that, it has to be through a 501c3 or nonprofit partner, which is why we partnered with the Valentine for our first project. Mickael’s sculpture aligned with their mission.” She worked to advocate for the project, funding the installation expenses and engineering costs out of her own pocket, rather than the fund. “Now that sculpture belongs to the city and the people, so that’s exciting,” she adds.
At press time, Wright was working with consultant Pruitt Resources to build a website, which should be up by early September. “It should have a call for proposals on the website,” she says, adding that they hope to fund at least one art project a year. Follow the CWPAF Instagram page for updates.
“If we establish a 501c3, we will start having a larger board,” Wright explains. “But right now, we’re just trying to be opportunistic. The Valentine sculpture we hope will be iconic, but I see some of our future projects having more short-term opportunities, whether public art residencies, or murals addressing important issues … just bringing unity.” Being a parent of two young children, she likes the idea of exposing kids to art with playground-based interactive art, for example.
Wright wants to keep the fund at the Community Foundation, she says, but eventually she hopes it will become a nonprofit for tax reasons and to allow the direct support of promising artists.
And what about new public art when it comes to historic Monument Avenue?
“I really want to build this fund so that, in the moment, when everyone is ready to think about repurposing Monument Avenue, we’re ready to help fund it.” —Brent Baldwin
