How many people who drive past the stone gates at Westhampton Way every week have actually walked inside the building with the tall glass lobby and sat down for a show? I ask because I hear it constantly from folks who live along River Road: they know Modlin Center for the Arts is there, they know it's part of the University of Richmond, and they treat it the way you'd treat a nice restaurant three towns over. Somewhere you go once a year, if that, and always for a ticket you had to plan around.
That instinct is about to cost you more than usual, because this is the season Modlin has been building toward for three decades, and a surprising amount of what's actually new about it doesn't require a ticket at all.
A Season Built to Mark Thirty Years
Modlin Arts Presents opened its doors in 1996, and the 2026-27 season marks thirty years of programming on that campus. This isn't a quiet anniversary. Among the headline events, actor Patrick Page brings his one-man show All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain to the Modlin stage, playing more than a dozen Shakespearean villains across a single performance directed by Simon Godwin. The chamber choir The Crossing, led by conductor Donald Nally, performs poor hymnal, a fourteen-piece song cycle by Pulitzer-winning composer David Lang. Two of the season's works are world premieres co-commissioned by Modlin itself, meaning the pieces exist because Richmond helped pay to bring them into being, not because a touring show happened to add a Virginia stop.
That's the version of the season you'd find on any arts calendar in town. It's real, and if you've been putting off getting tickets for a Modlin show, this is a legitimate season to break that habit.
But it's also the part of the story that every arts writer in Richmond is going to cover the same way. The part that matters more if you actually live two minutes from campus is what's happening around those ticketed nights.
The Part of the Season Nobody Buys a Ticket For
Paul Brohan, the Modlin Center's executive director, said something in the announcement that's easy to skim past: the majority of visiting artists commit to an extended residency beyond their single performance, contributing their techniques and experience not just to University of Richmond students but to the citizens of Richmond. That's not marketing language. It describes a structure Modlin has quietly built for years, and it means the anniversary season comes with more free access points than most neighbors realize exist.
Here's what's actually open to the public at no charge, based on how Modlin runs its regular programming:
- Master classes and artist talks tied to the visiting performers, often scheduled around the ticketed show
- Pre-concert and exhibition lectures that give context before you sit down for a performance
- The Department of Music's annual free concert series, run entirely apart from the ticketed season
- Full admission to the Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art, which is housed inside the Modlin building and never charges for entry
If you've only ever experienced Modlin as a once-a-year ticketed outing, you've been paying for a fraction of what the building actually offers. The free calendar runs alongside the marquee season, not instead of it, and during a thirty-year anniversary stretch with two world premieres in the mix, that free calendar is fuller than usual. Checking Modlin's own events listings before you plan a fall weekend is worth five minutes, because the difference between a paid evening performance and a free artist talk tied to the same visiting artist is often just a matter of which night you show up.
The Rest of the Season Doesn't Require Leaving the Block
That same pattern, more available nearby than people assume, holds for the rest of River Road's fall texture.
Portico sits in a converted cottage right on River Road, serving a casual Italian menu with a wine list that leans into the kind of unhurried dinner you don't need a reservation three weeks out to get. It's the kind of place that's easy to drive past for years because it doesn't look like a destination restaurant from the road, and easy to become a regular at once you've actually stopped.
Just up the road, Historic Tuckahoe sits at 12601 River Road, a landmark most residents recognize by name without necessarily knowing they can visit it. The property keeps regular daily hours, nine to five, which makes it one of those pieces of River Road history that's genuinely accessible rather than something you only see from a car window on the way past.
None of this is new information if you've lived here five years. What's new is the density of it landing in the same season. A thirty-year anniversary at Modlin, an easy weeknight dinner at Portico, a plantation you can actually walk up to on a Tuesday afternoon. The neighborhood doesn't need an event calendar assembled from outside to have a full fall. It already has one.
What This Actually Changes
The real shift here isn't that River Road got more interesting this year. It's that the assumption a lot of residents carry, that the good stuff requires a drive downtown or a ticket booked weeks in advance, doesn't hold up against what's actually on offer a few minutes from home. Modlin's free programming existed before this season. The world premieres and the Patrick Page show are what will get written up elsewhere. The residency structure behind them, and the free lectures and concerts that come with it, are what actually change how often a neighbor walks through those doors.
If you've been meaning to check out Modlin's calendar, do it before the ticketed shows sell out and take the free listings with them. If you've been meaning to try Portico on a Tuesday instead of saving it for an anniversary, this is the season to do it. And if you've driven past the Historic Tuckahoe sign a hundred times without pulling in, nine to five on a weekday is all the window you need.
I write about River Road because I sell homes here, and every so often a piece of local news reminds me why people who move to this corridor tend to stay. A university arts center hitting thirty years with a season this ambitious is one of those reminders. It's not why anyone buys a house on River Road. It's why, once they do, they don't leave.
If you're thinking about what a home along this stretch of Richmond might be worth, or just want to talk through what's changed in the market here lately, Gary Martin - VA is a call away. Let's talk about your Richmond home.
