You likely know Grammy-winning, singer/songwriter Alicia Keys and rapper/producer Kasseem Dean, aka Swizz Beatz, for their music. Starting in November, you’ll have a chance to get to know the couple as art collectors, too, when their exhibition “Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys” opens at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
After opening in New York at the Brooklyn Museum in February 2024, the exhibition traveled to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and the Minneapolis Institute of Art before coming to Richmond. It encompasses 130 paintings, photographs and sculptures by nearly 40 modern and contemporary Black artists such as Gordon Parks, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kehinde Wiley, Lorna Simpson, Amy Sherald, Nick Cave, Barkley L. Hendricks, Ebony G. Patterson and Jamel Shabazz, among others.
In a video interview from the Brooklyn Museum, Dean and Keys say the show’s title refers not only to the size of many of the works, but to the cultural stature of the artists and the importance of the stories they share.
“So many of us have trouble seeing ourselves in our highest, grandest vision,” Keys says. “We are always trying to kind of shrink ourselves down to a certain distilled version that someone else is going to feel comfortable with.” She adds that she hopes people coming to the show will be able to see themselves represented in the artwork and envision themselves as giants, too.
“Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys” is scheduled to appear at the VMFA from Nov. 22 to March 1, 2026.
“Paris Apartment, 2016–17,” Toyin Ojih Odutola (Nigerian, born 1985), charcoal, pastel, and pencil on paper. The Dean Collection, courtesy of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys © Toyin Ojih Odutola, Courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery
Celestial movement
The stars aligned to showcase a multidisciplinary project by artist George Ferrandi in 1708 Gallery’s annual “InLight” exhibition, which promises to turn Abner Clay Park into “a dreamlike cosmos of light, sound and ceremony.” The exhibition titled “Super!Giant!Jump!Star!” will include a Big Tent performance by the Richmond Symphony featuring the world premiere of an original score by Los Angeles composer Jherek Bischoff, along with dance performances by Mirah (full name Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn), based in New York City’s Brooklyn borough.
The inspiration for Ferrandi’s work stems from her fascination in learning that Earth’s North Star changes over time because of a wobble in its axis, says Emily Smith, executive director of 1708 Gallery. A former student of the late VCUarts Dean Joe Seipel, Ferrandi started to propose questions such as, “How do we celebrate that eventual transition?” and collaborated for several years with community groups around the country to research mythologies surrounding the various North Stars and develop characters that align with those portrayals, Smith says. Several of the sculptures were featured in a show last fall at 1708 Gallery titled “Once and Future Stars” in connection with a retrospective of Seipel’s work at VCU’s The Anderson gallery.
In the model of the Japanese Nebuta tradition, a festival that involves giant illuminated lanterns, ”Super!Giant!Jump!Star!” will feature 12 ceremonial sculptures that will move around the site in a procession.
1708 Gallery’s “InLight 2025: Super!Giant!Jump!Star!” will be presented in Richmond’s Abner Clay Park from Oct. 17-18, 7-11p.m.
“InLight” featured artist George Ferrandi’s “Boots on the Prairie” is shown in Kansas in 2019. Photo by Todd Seelie.
Elemental subjects
Two new shows that opened in August at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University explore the impact of human activities on land and the legacy of colonialism as portrayed through water.
Those are “Disquiet in the Sand,” a solo show of commissioned work by Lily Cox-Richard, a sculptor and associate professor in VCUarts’ Sculpture and Extended Media program, and a reimagining of work shown in the 2024 Venice Biennale by French-Caribbean artist Julien Creuzet with the title “Attila cataract your source at the feet of the green peaks will end up in the great sea blue abyss we drowned in the tidal tears of the moon.”
Working in White Sands, New Mexico, Cox-Richard made casts from impressions created in the sand, which became molds for reflective glass works that viewers can gaze into as they might a crystal ball. As described by the ICA, “These glassworks bear witness to places that have undergone significant transformation through tourism and other pervasive economies, in particular activities of the U.S. military.” Cox-Richard will give an artist talk at the ICA on Oct. 3 from 6-7:30 p.m. about the process behind the exhibition.
Creuzet’s immersive video and sculptural installation explores themes of slavery and colonialism from a French-Caribbean perspective, says ICA Acting Senior Curator Amber Esseiva. In contrast to the monuments and Confederate symbols artists often reference when confronting that history, “Julien has created this kind of underwater world, thinking about Martinique as an island.”
His exhibition is accompanied by a score composed by Creuzet with collaborator Ana Pi using Afro-Caribbean traditions. The two will perform the music with dance choreography at ICA on Oct. 10 at 6 p.m.
Esseiva describes both exhibitions as dreamlike and poetic, while exploring serious themes: “What’s exciting to me about these two shows is that there are different ways of approaching critiques on society.”
“Disquiet in the Sand” and “Attila cataract your source at the feet of the green peaks will end up in the great sea blue abyss we drowned in the tidal tears of the moon” opened at the ICA on Aug. 15 and run through Feb. 22, 2026.
The Byrd Park Pump House photographed by John Henley. The Valentine exhibit “West by Water: Richmond’s James River and Kanawha Canal” is co-curated by Henley and local author, Harry Kollatz, Jr.
Rediscovered waterway
Before there were trains and highways, people used to travel and move goods on the James River & Kanawha Canal between Richmond and Lynchburg. The history of that waterway — and images of its current state — will be highlighted in the exhibition “West By Water: Richmond’s James River and Kanawha Canal,” which opens at the Valentine on Sept. 25.
“People look at the canal and they think it’s a drainage ditch, but it was much more,” says Richmond writer Harry Kollatz Jr., who collaborated with photographer John Henley on the project. At its peak in the 1840s and 1850s, boats transported tobacco and other freight, as well as passengers, to and from Richmond’s Great Turning Basin, he notes. “It was a busy, complex system.”
Kollatz, known for delving into the region’s history through his writing in Richmond magazine, points out that development of the canal was championed by George Washington, who visited to watch its progress. With the building of railroads, the canal fell into disuse, although there have been occasional proposals to revive it for tourism and travel.
“If you understand what it was and what it possibly could be, it has a greater meaning,” Kollatz says.
“West By Water: Richmond’s James River and Kanawha Canal” opens at the Valentine on Sept. 25 and will run through Sept. 7, 2026. A walking tour of the canal is planned for Oct. 25, followed by a gallery talk with Henley and Kollatz on Nov. 6.
“Encounter Series No. 54, 2025” by Kenny Nguyen
Other highlights
The Branch Museum of Design will showcase Vietnamese artist Kenny Nguyen, who paints on silk and then cuts, sews and sculpts the material onto canvas as he tackles themes of cultural identity, displacement and integration. The exhibition , called “Confluence,” includes a debut of new pieces inspired by the museum’s architecture, a retrospective panel tracing Nguyen’s influences in fashion design and Vietnamese heritage, and a selection of works from his ongoing series. Sept. 10 to Dec. 19.
Candela Books + Gallery will feature a solo exhibition of work by Hannah Altman, who holds an MFA from VCU, to celebrate the release of her book “We Will Return to You” earlier this year. Drawing from Yiddish literature and Jewish texts, the book “considers how storytelling is translated and transformed through photographs by evoking the enigmatic, ritualistic and multilayered world of folklore,” as described by publisher Saint Lucy Books. Her exhibition of the same name will be on view alongside the group show “Science Girl Party.” Both shows run from Sept. 5 to Oct. 26.
Two solo shows by Jeffrey Hall and Timothy Hyde will open at Artspace gallery in October. Hall’s show, “Playing With Fire,” features trompe l’oeil paintings depicting vertical stacks of books viewed from above; these works explore the idea of censorship by highlighting books that are frequently banned or challenged in libraries and schools. Hyde’s show considers the daunting forces, both natural and man-made, facing humans. Both shows run from Oct. 24 to Nov. 22 at Artspace.
“Un/Bound: Free Black Virginians, 1619-1865,” at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture, tells the stories of free Black Virginians from the arrival of the first captive Africans in 1619 to the abolition of slavery in 1865 through a collection of artifacts and histories told by descendants and experts. It will be on display alongside the museum’s other exhibitions and displays related to America’s 250th anniversary. The “Un/Bound” exhibition opened June 14, and will continue through July 4, 2027, at VHMC.