"Some objects stop being useful before they stop having meaning." That line opens the Branch Museum of Design's fall exhibition, Becoming. It also fits the rest of the museum's calendar between now and mid-December. The art on the walls comes from salvaged material. The Halloween night brings in a shop that sells VHS tapes and a candy store that has only been open since July. On the Wednesday before Halloween, admission drops to half the usual price.
For anyone living along Monument Avenue, all of this is within walking distance. Here is how the season fits together and how to plan around it.
What Becoming Puts on the Walls
Becoming runs from September 24 through December 16, 2026, and features the work of two artists. In the museum's words, the show is about objects "once valued for their utility" being "reimagined as works of art that ask us to look again."
Thornton Dial worked without formal training and built his materials from what was around him: wire, cloth, salvaged metal, rope and carpet scraps. With them he made large paintings and found-object sculptures that draw on the symbolic vocabulary of the rural Black South. His work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the High and the Smithsonian.
Sanford Kogan approaches the same idea from industrial design. He works in what the museum calls FroiDesign, short for Found and Repurposed Objects of Industrial Design. He takes functional artifacts and builds them into sculptural compositions, treating light as a material in its own right. The museum describes his goal as inverting "the original hierarchy, allowing what was once secondary to become primary." His work has been shown in Berlin and Paris. More recently it has been shown in Richmond, where he now lives.
So one of the two artists in a Monument Avenue exhibition is a Richmond resident. That local thread also runs through the museum's biggest public night of the fall.
A Halloween Night Built From Local Pieces
The Branch Halloween Open House is Wednesday, October 28, from 6 to 9 p.m. Admission is $5, half the regular $10 ticket, and popcorn is free.
Look at who is supplying the night and the theme of Becoming shows up again.
- Monster Video is providing the spooky screening. The shop is at 207 N. Third St. In an August 2026 interview, RVA Mag described it as a retail store for VHS, DVDs and other movie-related merchandise rather than a rental shop. In other words, its business is keeping a supposedly obsolete format in circulation, which is close to what Dial and Kogan do with their materials.
- Trolley Car Sweets & Treats will be on site with Halloween treats. The museum calls the shop "our neighbors." Jacob Horsfall and Nikki Victoria opened the Scandinavian-inspired pick-and-mix shop at 407 Strawberry St. on July 1, 2026. It carries nearly 100 varieties of gummies and other candy from Sweden, Finland, Belgium, Spain, Turkey, Germany, Mexico and the Netherlands. "This doesn't really exist in Richmond," Horsfall told Richmond Magazine. For this Halloween, a three-month-old Fan business is one of the featured vendors at a museum on Monument Avenue.
- Haunts of Richmond will tell ghost stories. Local food trucks will also be there, with food and alcoholic beverages for sale.
The costume contest is back with new prizes, and it runs on a fixed schedule.
| Time | What happens |
|---|---|
| 6:00 p.m. | Doors open |
| 7:00 p.m. | Contest sign-up closes; entrants must be on site |
| 7:30 p.m. | Contest judging |
| 8:00 p.m. | Winners announced |
| 9:00 p.m. | Event ends |
Contestants have to be at the museum by 7 to sign up, so families with young children or anyone coming straight from work should plan to arrive in the first hour.
Why the Night Lands on a Wednesday
The museum's regular hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, 1 to 5 p.m. It is closed Mondays. The October 28 open house runs three hours past the usual weekday closing time, at half price. For residents who work during the day, it is one of the easiest chances all season to see Becoming without giving up a weekend afternoon.
The open house is presented in partnership with CultureWorks' artoberVA and is listed in its Pay-What-You-Will Event Series. artoberVA is a month-long arts and culture celebration that runs through October across Richmond and the Tri-Cities. That also explains the timing. The Branch is putting a lower-cost evening on the city's shared October arts calendar, so the event reaches people who would not normally have the museum on their list.
Other artoberVA events this month are close by:
- FWD:RVA, Style Weekly's arts and culture conversation series, runs October 5 through 9, 2026, in conjunction with artoberVA.
- Second Friday Pay-What-You-Will Art Classes at the Visual Arts Center, 1812 W. Main St., are on Friday, October 9. There are two sessions, 6 to 7:15 p.m. and 7:30 to 8:45 p.m., and you pay what you choose.
If you see Becoming and want to make something with your own hands, the VisArts classes come first, nearly three weeks before the Halloween night.
Planning the Evening of October 28
Because the event is in the middle of the week, a little planning goes a long way. Here is one way to put the night together:
- Stop at Trolley Car on Strawberry Street first if you want to bring a bag home. The candy is sold by the pound, and the shop also sells prepacked mixes. Check the shop's current hours before you go. The summer hours in Richmond Magazine's July story were described as temporary.
- Park in the First Baptist Church lot next to the museum if you are driving. The museum says parking there is free for the event.
- Arrive by 6:30 if anyone in your group is entering the costume contest. That leaves a cushion before sign-up closes at 7.
- Walk through Becoming before or after judging. The exhibition is open during the event, and the 7:30 judging is a natural break in the evening.
- Stay for the 8 p.m. announcement, then catch the end of the screening or a last ghost story before the night closes at 9.
Tickets are $5 and can be bought on the museum's event page, which asks for contact details for the ticket holder and names for any guests.
After October: The Rest of the Season
Becoming stays up until December 16, so residents who miss Halloween still have about seven weeks to see it at the regular price. General admission is $10. Students pay $5, and children under six get in free.
The next evening event is Live at The Branch: Høly River on Wednesday, November 18, from 6 to 8 p.m. Tickets are $35 and include wine, beer and light bites. That is seven times the price of the Halloween ticket for a shorter evening, which shows how much of a bargain the open house is. The museum's two fall evenings span its whole price range, from a $5 costume party to a $35 concert with drinks.
The exhibition opening on September 24 has already passed. It was a $10 evening with wine and beer, and WRIC covered it the day before. That leaves the Halloween Open House and the Høly River concert as the two after-hours chances this fall to see Dial and Kogan's work with a crowd.
For more on the street around the museum, our guides to architectural styles along Monument Avenue and the Monument Avenue neighborhood cover the houses on either side of the Branch. Our post on the Museum District this fall looks at what is changing a few blocks away.
At the Chris Small Group, we have spent decades around Monument Avenue's houses, many of them now on their second or third century of use, so a fall season about second lives feels familiar. If you own a home near the Branch and are thinking about its next chapter, we'd be glad to talk it through. Schedule a Private Consultation.
