Richmond, VA — In May 2025, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) will launch REWIND<<Fast/Forward, a series of immersive art installations, from the performative to the cinematic. Coinciding with the museum’s current expansion project, REWIND<<Fast/Forward is designed to engage visitors with contemporary art experiences while VMFA’s collection of mid-to-late 20th-century art is temporarily off view.
“Since its inception, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has been a platform for exhibiting cutting-edge works of contemporary art,” said Director and CEO Alex Nyerges. “Our new series ––- REWIND<<Fast/Forward ––- follows in the tracks of the museum’s Fast/Forward performance art series from 1985 to 2002, which featured a variety of forward-thinking artists, dance companies, and jazz musicians and ensembles, including the Sun Ra Arkestra.”
“The series pushes the elasticity of genres and media to highlight artists working at intersecting disciplines,” said Valerie Cassel Oliver, VMFA’s Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art and REWIND<<Fast/Forward organizer.
REWIND<<Fast/Forward events include VOLUMES by Ezra Masch, a concert featuring Ellen Fullman and JACK Quartet, and STAGED: Three Deuces by Jason Moran.
VOLUMES by Ezra Masch | May 15–17, 2025
VOLUMES is an immersive audio-visual experience that uses technology and live sound from percussion instruments to activate a site-specific light sculpture. Local percussionists will activate the installation, connecting sound, light and space. Tickets to see VOLUMES are sold out.
Ellen Fullman and JACK Quartet in Concert | Coming in 2026
This evening concert will feature Ellen Fullman performing on her iconic Long String Instrument and accompanied by the New York–based JACK Quartet. As the closing program for the exhibition Robert Rauschenberg: Cardbirds, Fullman will debut a VMFA-commissioned composition celebrating Rauschenberg’s practice as a groundbreaking artist who experimented with movement and material. The commission and exhibition, on the advent of the artist’s centennial celebration, are sponsored by a grant from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.
STAGED: Three Deuces by Jason Moran | Coming in 2027
VMFA recently acquired STAGED: Three Deuces by musician, composer and visual artist Jason Moran. In this architectural reimagining of the historic jazz venue, Moran acknowledges the power of jazz lore and the shifting social and political realities that shaped the genre. At a time when the popularity of jazz reached its peak in New York City, venues like Three Deuces were systematically destroyed by development and urban renewal. The devasting effects for the jazz world was the loss of historic venues that inspired generations of musicians. Designed to reimagine the club’s cramped stage, Moran has “restaged” the architecture replete with a piano, upright bass and drum kit. While not being activated through live performance, the Spiro piano will play with Moran’s prerecorded performances from the swinging jazz songbooks played throughout the North, as well as prison work songs from the same era associated with the South, to shed light on the complexity of Black life in America during this era.
Visit www.VMFA.museum to learn about upcoming performances in the museum’s innovative REWIND<<Fast/Forward series.
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About the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia, is one of the largest comprehensive art museums in the United States. VMFA, which opened in 1936, is a state agency and privately endowed educational institution. Its purpose is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret art, and to encourage the study of the arts. Through the Office of Statewide Partnerships Program, the museum offers curated exhibitions, arts-related audiovisual programs, symposia, lectures, conferences, and workshops by visual and performing artists. In addition to presenting a wide array of special exhibitions, the museum provides visitors with the opportunity to experience a global collection of art that spans more than 6,000 years. VMFA’s permanent holdings encompass more than 50,000 artworks, including the largest public collection of Fabergé outside of Russia, the finest collection of Art Nouveau outside of Paris and one of the nation’s finest collections of American art. VMFA is also home to important collections of Chinese art, English silver, French Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, British sporting and modern and contemporary art, as well as renowned South Asian, Himalayan and African art. In May 2010, VMFA opened the James W. and Frances G. McGlothlin Wing I after a transformative expansion, previously the largest in its history. A new expansion, the McGlothlin Wing II, is planned to open in 2028. Comprising more than 170,000 square feet, it will be the largest expansion in the museum’s history and will make VMFA the fourth largest comprehensive art museum in the United States.
Recently named one of the 20 best art museums in the U.S. by The Washington Post, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is the only art museum in the United States open 365 days a year with free general admission. For additional information, telephone (804) 340-1400 or visit www.VMFA.museum.
Media Contacts
Jan Hatchette | (804) 204-2721 | jan.hatchette@vmfa.museum
Amy Peck | (804) 773-1791 | amy.peck@vmfa.museum
Camryn Royal | (804) 204-2717 | camryn.royal@vmfa.museum
200 N. Arthur Ashe Blvd., Richmond, VA 23220