Tanesha Powell | Executive director, Art 180
“I think being an educator never leaves you, especially when you’re working with youth,” says Tanesha Powell. “There are so many skills you have to possess as a teacher to do the job well – basic organization, data analysis, communication – that carry over into what I’m doing now.”
What Powell is doing now is taking over the leadership of Art 180, the youth empowerment organization that is also one of the leading arts-oriented nonprofits in Richmond. The co-founder and longtime executive director of Art 180, Marlene Paul, stepped down in May.
“I’m excited by the relationships [Marlene] built in the community and she’s been very gracious in creating a path for me to stay connected to those folks,” Powell says. “Art 180 is her baby, and I promised to take care of her baby.”
Powell started her professional career working as a teacher for a dozen years in the Newport News school system. She moved into nonprofit management eight years ago, starting as an academic programs manager at the Blue Sky Fund and ultimately becoming senior program manager at Higher Achievement. Along the way, she completed the coursework for a doctorate in organizational leadership at Grand Canyon University.
While the job experience and education have built her leadership skills, she also draws insight from her role as a mother. “I have shared in meetings with my staff, ‘okay, I’m putting my mom hat on,’” she laughs. “It’s to get people thinking from the perspective of a parent. Different lived experiences give you different perspectives on life, and sharing them can help folks make more well-informed decisions.”
Since assuming her new role at Art 180, she’s found the collective energy there inspiring. “It is amazing being a part of an organization with so many creative people,” she says. “The majority of our staff are artists themselves. My job is to help harness their artistic energy and innovative ideas to reach as many youths as possible, looking for new ways to support their dreams and enhance their skills and abilities.”
From artist residencies for high school students to dozens of community-based programs, Art 180 has built its reputation on giving Richmond’s young people unique opportunities to explore, express and connect. One new frontier that Powell is evaluating is taking participants out of the city, maybe even travelling internationally.
“We’ve talked a lot about expanding exposure opportunities for our youth to new places, people, and experiences that will further enhance their artistic selves and their all-around selves,” Powell says. “Exposing them to international settings is another way to enhance their self-esteem and self-confidence.”
Powell will be leading Art 180 through a process of strategic planning in the coming months. “Which next step to take is the question on the table,” she says. “There are a lot of ideas, big goals and pie-in-the-sky dreaming, and that process will help us figure out what to do next.” (by David Timberline)
Jessica Bell Brown | Executive director, ICA at VCU
As corny as it sounds, Jessica Bell Brown truly believes in the potential of art institutions: “Whether it’s a city museum, or an institution like ours, grounded in contemporary art and cultural production, I believe these places serve a very real public and civic good.”
She would know. Growing up in Central Georgia, Brown and her two sisters were immersed in art. Parents Reginald and Deborah made sure their kids spent a lot of time in area cultural institutions — “summer camp trips to Atlanta’s High Museum of Art were a highlight” she says. They grew up surrounded by interesting art and photo prints at home. Her dad introduced her to an appreciation of images, but it wasn’t a pretentious, heavy-handed thing, she recalls. “It was a way of being. I have always felt like museums were like home, in a way.”
Brown wants the ICA to be that kind of place for the future generations. Hired in August of last year, she spent the first six months just listening.
From her listening tour, Brown, the former curator and head of contemporary art at the Baltimore Museum of Art, has compiled quite a to-do list for the Virginia Commonwealth University-affiliated ICA, a non-collecting modern art institution with an annual budget of $4.1 million. She wants to develop more traveling exhibitions — the ICA’s first, “Dear Mazie,” is on the docket — and to seek the highest museum accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums.
She also wants to foster partnerships with area arts organizations large and small; one biggie is the neighboring CoStar Center for the Arts and Innovation, under construction and due to open in 2027. In late August, the ICA invited more than 25 area arts groups to meet and potentially share resources. The summit came during a turbulent time for many arts and cultural organizations (see story on p.22) and Brown thinks the museum can be a helpful conduit for sharing and collaboration. “We want to be intentional and bring folks together.”
Part of her attraction to the ICA was that it was an “artist centered institution.” She’s been a successful curator herself, co-helming the award-winning touring exhibit, “A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration,” among others. “The ICA lives and breathes as a forum or platform for new ideas and new modes of expression.”
But before pursuing accreditation, she wants to develop a new strategic plan or “roadmap to where we want to go.” Also, Brown recognizes that she is taking the helm of an edgy and provocative modern art museum at a time of divisive politics (the ICA opened in 2018 with a group show that included a display of colorful Ku Klux Klan robes by Paul Rucker).
Still, the executive director says that she is going to trust the artists.
“At the end of the day, we have to support artists. They are asking the most critical questions of our times,” she says. “We at the ICA will continue to support creative expression and the interrogation of some of the most important issues of our moment. We trust that artists will do that work and that we’ll support them doing that work. That won’t change.” (Don Harrison)
Melissa Lesh | Documentary filmmaker
One of the most exciting wildlife documentary filmmakers working today calls Richmond home — when she can be home, that is. Melissa Lesh is often traversing the globe while working on her films, which involve the intersection between nature, humanity and wildlife.
Born in Mumbai, India and raised in Madison, Wisconsin, Lesh founded Emerging Earth Films in 2014, but her big breakthrough came eight years later with the successful documentary, “Wildcat,” which she and partner, photojournalist Trevor Frost, filmed in a remote Amazon rainforest of Peru, documenting the animal rescue efforts of a British war veteran suffering from PTSD.
Acquired for around $20 million dollars by Amazon Studios, “Wildcat” was named one of the top five docs of the year by the National Board of Review, won an Emmy for Outstanding Nature Documentary in 2023, and became the most streamed documentary on the planet at one point. [The couple also won Style Weekly’s Top 40 under 40 award, blowing all these other honors away].
With such accolades, you’d think Lesh’s film path would be easier, but it’s not. “The documentary industry has just collapsed since then,” Lesh says ruefully. “The only things getting made now are true crime or celebrity docs. It’s tough out there.”
But rather than accepting offers to direct, Lesh chose to stay focused on her interests and raise private equity to finance future independent films, which allows the pair more flexibility to explore the story. Currently, she is working on two projects: The first she describes as a sister film to “Wildcat,” a rare urban conservation story that takes place in South India following a father-and-son team of snake rescuers, in the snake bite capital of the world (where over 50,000 people die annually from them).
“There are cobras in people’s kitchens, vipers in people’s bathrooms, it’s what our characters call a national emergency,” Lesh says, noting that the father character has rescued over 80,000 snakes in his legendary career.
The couple has been co-directing that film for two years, expanding the story beyond the original family dynamic. “It’s kind of got a ‘Tiger King’-aspect to it,” Lesh says. “There are these snake rescuers all over the country, a whole network and culture, some of which are at odds with each other.” Climate change and overpopulation are also factors in the growing problem. “As humanity urbanizes the globe, where are these wild animals supposed to go and who is in whose home?” she asks.
They will likely be filming through this year and starting post-production in early 2026, Lesh says. The other film project, which is still in the research phase, involves Lesh co-directing with another filmmaker while working with an investigative reporter from a notable national publication to focus on the illegal wildlife trade of African Grey parrots in South Africa.
Amazingly, these far-flung projects are not all she has going on. As previously reported in Style, the couple used some of their Amazon money to buy a commercial space in downtown Richmond at 7 S. 1st Street, a 125-year-old former criminal law office, which they planned to turn into a documentary film center of sorts.
“We thought it was move-in ready. We were planning out editing space and screening space to open it for other local filmmakers,” she explains. “But it needed a complete gut job.” Lately, when they’re back from intense filming in India, “Trevor’s spending 12-hour days rebuilding it, all the drain lines, running water lines. Our lives are ridiculous,” she says, laughing.
The building is now being re-envisioned as more of a flex space, she adds, with office space and maybe an Airbnb in back; whatever they can do to help cover their overhead and basics in order to continue making the important work they want to do.
“We want to keep telling meaningful stories,” Lesh says. “Slow journalism, long-form stories.” (Brent Baldwin)
Rebecca Street | General manager, Allianz Amphitheater at Riverfront
Rebecca Street just loves talking about parking.
“It’s a challenge that you have to deal with,” sighs the general manager of the Allianz Amphitheatre, the new 7,500-seat outdoor stage built along Historic Tredegar near Brown’s Island. “It’s all part of having a venue in a downtown area.”
Throughout Allianz’s first summer, Street was dealing with challenges related to parking and parking access for the Live Nation-run venue, noise complaints from Oregon Hill neighbors, charges of a lack of diversity in the artist schedule, and the ongoing spectacle of escalating crowds mulling around the perimeters of the open-air stage, enjoying the likes of Gwar, Dave Matthews Band and Neil Young for free.
Of the latter, Street seems resigned, even complimentary of the freeloaders. “I’d really love for them to be inside, but the outside is public land, and I can’t enforce that. I’ll say that I’ve been impressed by the Richmonders who have come out and sat in those spaces. They stay out of the road and they pick up their trash.” The venue’s staff even provides the bags. “They fill them up and we come get them.”
As for lack of parking, she feels that it is an overstated problem. “I just went up to D.C. and there’s literally nowhere to park. And if you can find it, it’s $100. I’ve been working on parking since the day I started, looking at different options and mapping out how far it takes to walk from the venue to different lots. I mean, I’ve gotten my steps in.”
Street, a Northern Virginia native, dealt with many of these same issues in her previous job, as the general manager of Whitewater Amphitheater in the remote locale of New Braunfels, Texas. “It was similar, which is funny because the two [amphitheaters] seem so different. But I was so space challenged, and it was in the middle of nowhere, like 11 miles from the highway. We were a 5,600-capacity venue on a two-lane road and you can bet there were parking and traffic challenges.”
Street worked on the artist side of the music industry first, as a tour manager (and sometimes van driver) for up-and-coming artists like The Crooks, Stars In Stereo, and Craig Wayne Boyd, season seven winner of “The Voice.” When she went into venue management, she brought that experience to the job. “I knew what I expected when I walked into a venue representing an artist. I could now implement that.” What’s the most important amenity a venue can offer to a performer? “Showers,” she laughs.
Interestingly, Street finished her master’s degree in American jurisprudence at Texas A&M School of Law before taking the Richmond gig. Working to address ongoing concerns about Richmond’s latest music showplace, she seems open to dialoguing with neighboring residents on the noise issues and admits that a recent Michael Paul Williams column in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, criticizing the venue’s lack of diversity, “sat with me a bit.”
“He unlocked a larger conversation about how the music industry champions certain genres or artists over others, whether it’s male artists dominating and females having a harder time, or the rock genre dominating these amphitheaters and urban acts not having a place to play.” On this, and other issues, she intends to look for solutions.
At the same time, the new resident is loving Richmond. “There are so many ice cream shops,” she marvels. Street and her longtime partner, who also works in the music industry, have moved to a home in Woodland Heights, where their dog and three cats are “going insane. They love stairs, which is something they didn’t have in Texas.”
Headquartered in Beverly Hills, California, Live Nation is Street’s first corporate employer, and she admits it’s been a bit of a transition. “Absolutely there is bureaucracy. I’m used to doing everything on my own. But it’s kind of beautiful because I’ve been able to bring what I’ve learned from the road, this scrappy, artist-first mentality, and work with this well-oiled machine like Live Nation, who has the resources to bring these awesome experiences into Richmond.” (Don Harrison)
