The new executive director of the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University has big plans.

Among other things, Jessica Bell Brown wants the ICA to develop a new strategic plan, produce more traveling exhibitions, obtain the highest museum accreditation, and foster more successful partnerships like its active VPM + ICA Community Media Center.

Most of all, she wants Richmond’s contemporary art showplace to grow.

“We are in a new era, right?” she said last week. “We have to think comprehensively about growing our audience.”

The former curator and head of contemporary art at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Brown has been in Richmond six months. But a speech last Wednesday in the ICA auditorium was really her public introduction. She told a crowd of supporters and patrons she’s excited to lead the modern art museum at the most “critical and most exciting juncture” in its seven-year history. As part of Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts, she said the museum is poised to be “a launching pad for innovative projects that get us to think about climate sustainability, biodiversity, urban planning and behavioral health.”

Her address also served as a state-of-the-museum speech that spotlighted recent successes, like a 42% increase in attendance — 19,166 total visitors — and the emergence of the ICA’s first traveling exhibition, “Dear Mazie,” a group show assembled by the museum’s head curator Amber Esseiva.

Brown also outlined for the crowd the institution’s stated goals — such as implementing a new strategic plan by the end of the year, and seeking accreditation by 2028 from the American Alliance of Museums — and future partnerships. One of those is the neighboring CoStar Center For the Arts and Innovation, now under construction. It will be an active collaborator with the museum once it goes online in 2027.

What won’t change, Brown says, are the kind of edgy and provocative exhibits patrons came to expect under the leadership of outgoing executive director Dominic Willsdon — an often challenging mix of modern art, particularly from African and Latin American artists. “We’re going to continue to lean into our programming,” she told Style after the speech. “In terms of changes, it will be additive, not subtractive.”

Most of all, Brown wants more people to come inside this futuristic building at the corner of Broad and Belvidere. “It’s about finding new opportunities to be in alignment with different audiences,” she says. “That puts us in a position to be even more robust programmatically.”

The ICA is a non-collecting institution that features rotating exhibitions and programs, mostly curated in-house. With an annual budget of $4.1 million, the museum is funded through a combination of sources, including VCU’s Educational and General (E&G) fund, and private donations. Its next major exhibit, opening June 27, is “Ayida,” a group assembly described as “celebrating the Caribbean and its diaspora.”

“The ICA exemplifies what the arts should be in the city of Richmond, nationally and internationally,” VCU School of the Arts Dean Carmenita Higginbotham said in her introduction to Brown on Wednesday (the ICA was officially integrated into the school last year). “There is no one better positioned to lead this moment, this opportunity, that the ICA offers. I find Jessica to be warm, engaged, brilliant, committed and dedicated to the future of the arts in Richmond.”

The new executive director got her Master of Arts in Modern and Contemporary Art from Princeton University, and her bachelor’s degree in art history from Northwestern University, and has published widely on a range of contemporary art. She has also been a successful curator herself, co-helming the award-winning national touring exhibit, “A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration,” among others.

Importantly, at the Baltimore Museum, Brown brought in major gifts and established valuable relationships with private foundations and donors. There are hopes she can do the same here.  “Jessica wants to be front and center in the development process” says Dr. Pamela Kiecker Royall, the president of the museum’s advisory board and chair of its development committee. “She has a really strong vision for getting sponsorships for exhibitions. I’m personally fired up about her plans for the ICA.”

In the current right wing political environment, the new executive director is aware that the contemporary art world has to meet the moment. But Brown says that she’s not going to push anything. She’s going to trust the artists.

“We go where artists go, where artists enter. So meeting the moment means continuing to lean into what we do and do well, producing new work, embracing the challenge of bringing new work into formation. It also means listening. Our mission is to listen, to create and to make art public. Our programs, our exhibitions, our partnerships will create that opportunity.”

This article originally appeared on Styleweekly.com.