One film featured at VCU’s Southern Film Festival tells the story of a slave who bought her freedom. (Credit: elycefeliz / Flickr)

One film featured at VCU’s Southern Film Festival tells the story of a slave who bought her freedom.

The seventh annual Southern Film Festival begins this week in Richmond. Organized by VCU, the event starts Thursday and runs through Monday. Mallory Noe-Payne reports.

Credit: Charlottesville Mural Project

If you’ve driven through the UVA campus recently, you may have noticed a mural going up on the side of the Graduate Hotel. It’s a collaboration with the Charlottesville Mural Project, a Philadelphia artist and a prize-winning poet. Emily Richardson-Lorente has the story.

Credit Mallory Noe-Payne / WVTF

Virginia’s Museum of Fine Arts unveiled its newest exhibit this weekend. It’s a big get for the VMFA. The museum is one of only 7 stops for this particular collection, and the only in the southeast.

But it’s special for another reason. The display is a mid-career retrospective from artist Kehinde Wiley, a young black man who’s a pop star of the art world. The exhibit represents an effort by the museum to diversify both its collection, and its audience. Mallory Noe-Payne reports.

While in town, Kehinde Wiley sat down at the VMFA to talk to Chioke I’Anson. I’Anson is a radio producer and professor of African-American Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. He began by asking Wiley what it means to have his works on display in Richmond…