Growing up in Richmond’s near West End, Marlene Paul thought art was part of everyone’s childhood. “I credit my mother with doing art with me at home,” she says. “I assumed all children grew up doing it.”

Eventually, she decided she was going to be an artist. However, her first semester at James Madison University was eye-opening. “I had three art classes and I was like, ‘What am I doing?’ This isn’t high school art anymore, this is serious.”

Paul didn’t forget her interest in art, however. Years later, she would partner with another “closeted artist,” Kathleen Lane, to establish Art 180, a creative collective and youth empowerment organization that has become a linchpin in the Richmond cultural scene.

Nearly 30 years after co-founding the nonprofit Art 180, Paul will be stepping down as executive director at the end of May. “There are people who can do this job now that have things that I don’t have,” says Paul. “They’re what we need right now. I’ve done this for a long time and the best thing I can do is be okay with letting go.”

The October 2024 press release announcing Paul’s departure stated that, since Art 180’s founding in 1998, it has run nearly 700 programs, reached more than 8,800 young people, and involved at least 1,100 professional artists.

To rack up those kinds of numbers, Paul has worked tirelessly, networked broadly, and maneuvered cleverly in promoting Art 180’s mission to provide opportunities for creative expression for young people who face limited access.

“I think young people are interested in what we offer because we focus more on freedom of expression than skill mastery,” Paul says. “Everyone has their own creativity and we help young people learn how to access it, give them opportunities to share it, and maybe realize some benefit in doing so.”

Defender of public art

Though Art 180 had been growing steadily since its establishment in 1998, many Richmonders first found out about it in the spring of 2012 when an issue involving the city’s permitting process exploded into a major conflict.

A public art project initiated by ART 180 called “What Do You Stand For?” consisted of more than 30 large self-portraits, most of them created by middle school students. The series of 8-foot-tall pieces had been displayed at locations throughout the city for nine months without incident.

But when they were installed across several blocks of Monument Avenue’s median at the end of March, the city determined a permit to allow the display shouldn’t have been issued and revoked it. Different officials gave conflicting reasons for why the installation should be removed, from the art interfering with the annual Easter parade to the portraits representing “unlawful signage.”

The brouhaha that followed not only raised the organization’s profile, it showcased Paul’s savvy skills as a nonprofit leader. She worked painstakingly with all relevant parties to make sure the installation wouldn’t be a problem, including the Monument Avenue Preservation Society, multiple departments within city government, and Venture Richmond who organized the Easter Parade.

So when the city would not back down from revoking the permit, the perception of a heartless bureaucracy casting aside the work of innocent children led to an electric response.

“We were on NPR and on the front page of the Times-Dispatch for five consecutive days,” says Paul. “We were also working with the city to secure a mortgage loan to buy our first permanent space. It was the perfect storm for heightened visibility.”

Monument Avenue residents rallied in support of Art 180 and agreed to host the installation on their front lawns. A month later, Impact 100 voted to grant the organization $100,000, capping off a capital campaign that allowed them to buy a building in Jackson Ward, their current headquarters.

“The groundswell of support looked like everything from Monument Avenue homeowners to students all writing letters to the mayor defending the portraits,” says Paul. Even though she’d already received plenty of accolades, including being recognized as one of Richmond’s Outstanding Women by the YWCA in 2008, Paul emerged from the Monument Avenue controversy as an authority regularly tapped for her views on public art, city management and youth empowerment.

Mentoring youth

Alyssa Brown was only 9 years old when she got involved in her first program with Art 180 but she wasn’t supposed to be there. “It was a program at the Boys and Girls Club that was just for teens,” Brown recalls. “I saw them going out and painting the walls so I snuck out and started painting with them.”

When she was ultimately discovered, the project manager said he didn’t think she could participate. After Brown pleaded her case, Paul took the opportunity to reconsider the program’s parameters. “Marlene was like, ‘well, you’re kind of mature for your age,’ and they let me in,” says Brown.

Now 25, a college student and an executive saleswoman for AT&T, Brown spent nine years in different Art 180 programs. “I’ve done like, literally every medium you could do: poetry, yoga, dance, murals,” she says. “Art 180 really changed my life, it really is just like your family.”

Brown returned to Art 180 for an open mic night this past February to share a poem she wrote inspired by her experiences there. “When I graduated high school, Marlene was like, ‘We love you, come back and see us, you’ll always have a home here.’”

“I definitely consider Marlene a mentor,” Brown continues. “I really look up to her. She’s very organized but also very kind-hearted. If she was going through hardships, you wouldn’t know it because she was just so chill.”

“Seen, heard and valued”

Nicole Jones serves on Richmond city council representing the 9th district. She also has a day job working as deputy director of Art 180; Paul hired her as donor relations director in 2017 and made her deputy director in 2020.

In the midst of listing the kind of adjectives you might expect in describing Paul’s leadership—visionary, pragmatic, intentional—she stops suddenly.

“You know, Marlene remembers everyone’s birthday,” Jones says. “And she gives the best gifts ever, gifts that are so personalized. I think that shows how thoughtful she is, how she really gets to know a person.”

“We have big shoes to fill with Marlene leaving,” Jones continues. “But we have all learned from the things she’s done. We’ll be doing our best to make sure people continue feeling seen, heard and valued—that’s Marlene’s super power.”

Having just turned 60, Paul makes it clear that this transition does not mean retirement for her. “I’m going to be working for at least another decade, probably longer,” she says. “A former board member said to me, ‘You’re smart to leave when you have the energy and the creativity to do something else.’”

“I think young people are interested in what we offer because we focus more on freedom of expression than skill mastery,” Paul says.

Given that Paul is a single parent with a daughter heading to college next year, it’s hard to avoid the parental analogies.

“The parallels with my actual parenting are not lost on me at all,” she says. “My daughter is about to leave the nest and I have to let her continue that path, with a little bit of loving support.

“With Art 180, it will be continuing on without me but it has the support of a collective—not just the staff, but a whole community. I feel like, in leaving, I’m kind of returning it to the community.”

Art 180’s Block Party, its annual community celebration, will be held Friday, May 2 in front of their headquarters at 114 West Marshall St. from 4-9 p.m. More information is available at https://www.art180.org/blockparty.