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The Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art is moving.
The independent museum is trading its campus near the Virginia Beach Oceanfront for a state-of-the-art facility at Virginia Wesleyan University, according to an announcement Tuesday.
The museum did not announce an expected date for the move. The new facility has yet to be built and museum officials said further details would be coming this fall.
The new facility will be next to the Susan S. Goode Fine and Performing Arts Center at the northern end of Wesleyan’s Virginia Beach campus.
The announcement says “the central location on the Virginia Beach campus of VWU makes Virginia MOCA even more accessible.”
It’s not clear what will happen with the museum’s current location, which includes a nearly 38,000 square foot building on 9.6 acres at the end of I-264. The land and the building are both owned by the city. The musem has leased the property for $1 per year since 1986.
Linda Koller, the Virginia MOCA’s director of marketing, said they don’t know what the plan will be for the property once they’ve left.
Virginia Beach city spokeswoman Tiffany Russell said the City Council will be the ones determinine what comes next for the site.
"We expect to have more discussions about this topic once more information becomes available," Russell said in an email Tuesday.
Virginia MOCA brought in more than 55,000 visitors at its Oceanfront location between July 2020 and July 2021, according to the museum’s annual report.
