Community Calendar

Mallory Zondag, award-winning artist and educator living in New York, uses fiber arts and sculpture to explore the natural world and how it relates to the physical body and the human experience.

She explores deeply personal and connective universal stories through the meditative and hands-on practices of wet felting, weaving, sculpting, and stitching, seeking to bring the ephemeral into physical being. 

This exhibition of work includes a site-specific installation at the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum, which was created using hand felted wool, wax, fibers, fabrics and objects both found and recycled. 

Mallory Zondag: Transmissions from the Anthropocene, on view at the museum from July 30 - December 5, will be accompanied by an artist lecture and a series of community workshops in the Roanoke Valley.

Image Credits: Mallory Zondag, the VOID, 2026. Wood, Blackest Black in the Known Universe paint, tufted wool yarn, felted wool, wire, plastic waste, paper mache, sound. In collaboration with Peter Ossi, woodworker, and Lin Furio, sound designer.

Jake McCord, a self-taught artist from Georgia, frequently said that making art was something he did “just for fun.” He lived and worked alone and considered his art to be “company” – Once a painting was complete, McCord would install it on his front porch to share the work with the community, engaging passersby and sparking conversation.

McCord’s works are products of his imagination and his unique vision of the world. Looking at his paintings is an invitation to enter McCord’s lively and colorful world and a reminder that anyone can express themselves through creating art. "Jake McCord: Jolly Company" is on view at the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum August 13 – November 14, 2026, and is on loan from Chris Ross and Traveling Art Exhibitions. Please go to Hollins.edu/Museum to find our open hours!

Please also join the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum for a community workshop inspired by McCord's paintings on Friday, October 23rd from 2-4 PM on the front plaza outside the museum.

Image Credits: Jake McCord, "Untitled (Purple Dog with Ball)," 1998. House paint on found wood, 20 x 15 inches. © Private Collection.

"No Excellent Beauty: Disability Aesthetics" is a two-person show that features the work of photographers Kristen Olinger and Michael Van Huffel. Both Olinger and Van Huffel work in the medium of digital photography to engage in self-portraiture as a means to process living with late onset chronic illness and disability. Neither artist carries visible signs of their illness, which can make describing their challenges and experiences more difficult, but through their photographs they are able to make the unseen visible.

The Eleanor D. Wilson Museum has partnered with Clovernook Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired to provide braille printings of all text included in this exhibition, as well as Swell Touch prints of a selection of pieces for all to feel and enjoy.

Image Credits: Kristen Olinger, "Opulent Dolls," digital photograph, 2025. Image courtesy of the artist.

Throughout October, there's plenty to see at Art Works. Explore six galleries, visit 82 working artist studios, and enjoy a full lineup of exhibits. Immerse yourself works by Sky Dai, Johnye Bennett, Lew Lott, Carol Gruppé and Unmask curated by Susan Vaughan. The All Media Show features art by local artists. The Bridge Project will continue exhibiting Nathan Hosmer Nevarez until November 30th.

Visit us Tuesdays through Sundays 11am- 5pm. Admission is free and open to the public. Convenient and free parking is available. Exhibits will remain on view through November 14th, 2026 (unless otherwise noted). Carol Gruppé will remain up until October 31st.

Marks of Memory examines time, data, ancestry, and personal experience through the work of three contemporary artists—Veronica Jackson, Annette Lawrence, and LaRissa Rogers—who question what stories get told, who gets remembered, and what data gets counted and recorded. Highlighting printmaking and patterning as physical processes and systems of communication, this exhibition explores how personal and collective histories are remembered, preserved, and disseminated.

In January 1848, a carpenter spotted flecks of gold in a shallow stream at Sutter’s Mill in California—triggering the greatest voluntary migration in U.S. history and jolting a fragile republic already sliding toward crisis. In The Rush, Nathaniel Philbrick transforms the Gold Rush from a tale of sudden riches into the origin story of America’s modern contradictions: capital consolidated at dizzying speed, democracy in thrall to private power, xenophobia weaponized in the name of liberty—and a stubborn belief in the American experiment that refuses to die. This is the story of a nation tearing at the seams—a republic tested by its own ideals. From the feverish gold-mining camps of the Sierra Nevada mountains to the wharves and vigilance committees of San Francisco, Philbrick renders a combustible, all-world society. He follows the gold as it moves from riverbed to countinghouse to the halls of power, revealing how vigilantism hardened into law and how debates over slavery in the West tipped the balance in Washington. The result is a clear, human story of how a scramble for wealth reshaped ideas of freedom, labor, and belonging—and how California's rise helped push a fractured nation toward war. The Rush is alive with characters whose choices still reverberate: a searing, panoramic epic that captures both the fury and the promise of America.

Nathaniel Philbrick is the award-winning author of several bestselling books, including In the Heart of the Sea, winner of the National Book Award; Mayflower, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Valiant Ambition, winner of the George Washington Prize; Bunker Hill, winner of the New England Book Award; Travels with George; Sea of Glory; and The Rush: California Gold, the Civil War, and the Making of the Modern World.

A book signing and light refreshments will follow the program.

The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

Experience the magic of Garden Glow presented by Kroger, Maymont's largest annual fundraiser and one of Richmond's favorite fall experiences. Spectacular light displays transform Maymont after dark into an unforgettable evening of color and light.

Wander the illuminated Glow Path sponsored by Kinsale Capital Group featuring larger-than-life displays, explore the rainbow of color in the Japanese Garden after dark, then gather around cozy fire pits in Glow Village with your whole crew. Enjoy local food trucks, Glow Bars sponsored by CoStar Group, seasonal treats and glowing photo opportunities.

Come learn the sport of rugby while getting fit and making great friends. All are welcome. No experience necessary.

Rural Idaho. Difficult Memories. An estranged father’s house to sell. From the acclaimed author of The Whale, Little Bear Ridge Road confronts issues as wide as galaxies and as intimate as family secrets.

After the death of his long-estranged father, Ethan returns to the tiny hometown he once escaped—only to find himself face to face with the only family he has left: his sharp-tongued, fiercely independent aunt. While cleaning up years of a failing family, the two are forced to confront old pain, unfinished conversations, and the orbit that keeps pulling them back to a place they want to leave.

At its core, Little Bear Ridge Road is a deeply human story about distance and return, silence and understanding, and the complicated ways families try—and sometimes struggle—to show up for each other, even when words fall short.

Performances on Wednesday (alternating 2PM and 7PM), Thursdays and Fridays (7PM), Saturdays (2PM and 7PM), and Sundays (3PM)

Ticket link: https://va-rep.org/events/little-bear-ridge-road/

Address: Virginia Repertory Theatre - 114 W. Broad St, Richmond VA
Phone: 804-282-2620

tickets@virginiarep.org

Don’t miss Grace & Glorie, Oct. 9-Nov. 8. The poignant, heartwarming comedy by acclaimed Virginia playwright Tom Ziegler explores love, loss, and the universal search for meaning in all our lives. Grace, a fiercely independent 90-year-old with terminal cancer, checks herself out of the hospital to spend her final days at her rustic cabin home nestled deep in the breathtaking Blue Ridge Mountains. Glorie, a Harvard MBA, is searching for a new purpose in her life and hoping to find peace in Appalachia, far from the demands of New York City. She volunteers for her local hospice program. Her first client is Grace. What begins as the hilarious collision of two opposite cultures and generations turns into a rich and abiding friendship, in which each woman finds her home. Filled with humor, heart and hope, Grace and Glorie is a celebration of the transformative power of human connection, and a tribute to the strength and resilience of women and their friendships at any age. Starring Richmond favorites Catherine Shaffner* and Amber Marie Martinez. (*Member, Actors' Equity Association)