It took nearly a decade of planning and a few detours along the way, but the McLean Project for the Arts’ (MPA) Berlage Arts & Education Center has made its debut.
“This is now an asset for the future,” MPA Executive Director Lori Carbonneau said during a May 8 interview at the center, located on the ground floor of The Signet condominiums at 6910 Fleetwood Road.
MPA has raised $5.85 million of the $6.25 million required to purchase and outfit the 6,100-square-foot, three-gallery space. With the facility now open, a final fundraising push is on the horizon.
The facility is named in honor of MPA board member, arts supporter and donor Bruce Berlage. Additional funding sources include a $500,000 Economic Opportunity Reserve Fund grant from Fairfax County, plus $1.8 million raised from among MPA’s 45 board directors.
The bulk of the funding came from “a very local investor base” that saw the value of the initiative, Carbonneau said.
The new facility will augment MPA’s main gallery space and offices, located at the McLean Community Center (1234 Ingleside Avenue).
Carbonneau and MPA community-engagement director Elizabeth Murphy took FFXnow on the May 8 tour, with exhibitions director Nancy Sausser also stopping by.
The tour showed the progress from less than a month before, when buildout was ongoing.
With construction complete, a ribbon-cutting ceremony was held April 30, the same day the center’s first exhibition — titled “Life Through the Power of Color” — opened.
It presents the works of Yasmine Iskander (1998-2024), an abstract artist who had been a member of MPA and seen her works collected and displayed worldwide. According to exhibition curators:
“[Iskander] expressed her world in brilliantly colored abstract paintings. She built compositions by alternately veiling and revealing shapes, applying washes that soften edges and then marking the plane with geometric or biomorphic elements that assert themselves with decisive clarity.”
The inaugural exhibition will run through Sunday, June 7. A reception is set for Thursday, May 14 from 7 to 9 p.m.
In the week since the ribbon-cutting, the gallery space has been joined by Café Monet, owned by MPA and operated by Knead Hospitality + Design. It pays homage both to artist Claude Monet and McLean’s Monett family, local arts supporters who provided funding in support of the project.
Nearing completion is a professional-grade ceramics studio and workshop space.
Murphy told FFXnow that organizations including the McLean Community Foundation, McLean Community Association, McLean Redevelopment Corp. and the office of Dranesville Supervisor Jimmy Bierman all backed the project during its lengthy gestation period.
“Everybody who lives in this county is interested in how we bring opportunities to this area,” she said.
The new arts center delivers “a freshness that is adding to the community,” Murphy said.
Jan Moshinsky of FirstService Residential, who serves as general manager of The Signet, said residents of the 121-unit condominium building will benefit from having the arts center and restaurant at the building’s base.
“We’re thrilled; the community is thrilled,” Moshinsky said.
The nine-month-long process of converting the empty shell on the first level to an arts center and eatery was not without disruptions and hiccups, but Moshinsky said residents took it in stride.
“It’s been a team effort,” she said of the construction effort.
Carbonneau noted a third of Signet residents contributed funds in support of the new facility.
The idea for an ancillary MPA facility originated in 2017, initially focusing on a partnership with the Fairfax County Park Authority to use an 18th-century home at Clemyjontri Park as the basis for an expanded arts center on the site.
When that plan fell through, the vision turned to occupying space in McLean’s redeveloping downtown. In 2022-2023, negotiations with the owner of the empty space at 6910 Fleetwood took place, and fundraising efforts began.
Carbonneau credited Bierman, former Dranesville District Supervisor John Foust, staff with the county’s Department of Economic Initiatives and leadership of the McLean Community Center for sticking with the project from start to finish.
Of Bierman, she said, “early in his tenure, he made a big bet on us.”
The new Berlage facility is not MPA’s first foray outside the McLean Community Center.
While MCC underwent a major renovation, MPA in late 2016 began using space in the Chain Bridge Corner Shopping Center that had been vacated by a Virginia Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) store. MPA@ChainBridge, as it was called, used the storefront for about two years until the community center’s renovation was completed.
Carbonneau told FFXnow that the final fundraising push for the Berlage facility slowed as attention focused on getting the new facility completed and opened.
“It hasn’t proven to be quick,” she acknowledged of getting to the financial finish line, but expressed optimism the final funds will be in hand soon.
Prospective donors can still secure naming rights for the executive office space as well as five ceramics wheels.
