FFXnow quoted MPA Executive Director Lori Carbonneau in May: "This is now an asset for the future." She was standing inside a building her organization had spent almost ten years trying to build. She runs McLean Project for the Arts, and the asset she meant is the new Berlage Arts & Education Center on Fleetwood Road, which opened its doors on April 30 after a fundraising campaign that survived a failed site plan and a stretch of years when federal arts funding kept drying up mid-project.
The center pairs its arts programming with a café, offering visitors another reason to stop in.
A Decade of Planning the New Center
McLean Project for the Arts has been putting up shows since 1962, mostly out of borrowed space inside the McLean Community Center on Ingleside Avenue. The arrangement placed MPA's exhibitions within the McLean Community Center. Visitors routinely assumed MPAartfest, the nonprofit's signature outdoor festival at McLean Central Park, was a Community Center event rather than MPA's own. During the two years MCC underwent renovation starting in late 2016, MPA ran a stopgap gallery out of a vacated ABC storefront in the Chain Bridge Corner Shopping Center. Even that arrangement had an expiration date built in.
The nonprofit's first real shot at independence was Clemyjontri Park, a possibility serious enough that the Fairfax County Park Authority revised its master plan in 2022 to accommodate an arts center there. That plan didn't survive, and the search shifted to downtown McLean, where by 2022 and 2023 MPA was negotiating for a commercial condominium on the ground floor of The Signet, a residential building on Fleetwood Road that had originally been built with a restaurant or retail tenant in mind and never found one. MPA officially purchased the space on September 13, 2024, broke ground the following year, and opened this spring.
The ground-floor commercial space at The Signet sat empty for years before MPA acquired it. The new center combines galleries and arts programming with a café.
What $6.25 Million Actually Bought on Fleetwood Road
The Berlage Center cost $6.25 million to purchase and outfit, with $500,000 of that coming from Fairfax County's Economic Opportunity Reserve through the county's Economic Development Authority. The rest came from donors, including MPA's own 45-member board, which is not a typical funding structure for a small regional arts nonprofit. Most organizations this size lease. MPA bought.
That decision explains a lot about how the building is laid out. At 6,100 square feet, it holds three named galleries, a dedicated ceramics studio, classrooms, a meeting room that doubles as private event space, and a full-service café with its own kitchen. Buying rather than leasing meant MPA could build all of that to spec rather than adapting someone else's floor plan.
Three Rooms, One Named for a 26-Year-Old Painter
The galleries themselves are worth knowing by name, because each does something different. The Yasmine C. Iskander Gallery handles large and group shows. Gallery Vivienne is a black-box space built for digital and installation work, with a folding screen that can pull back to merge it with the roughly 900-square-foot main gallery for bigger installations. The Sally & John Simms Gallery is scaled for solo and two-artist shows.
The inaugural exhibit, "Life Through the Power of Color," is a tribute to Yasmine Iskander, the abstract painter the largest gallery is named for. She was a devoted MPA supporter since the nonprofit selected her for MPAartfest in 2017. Her work had already shown at the Kennedy Center before the center that now bears her name existed. It's a specific, weighted choice for a first show, and it signals that MPA is treating this building as a continuation of relationships it already had rather than a fresh start.
The Ceramics Studio Is Where the Regulars Live
The Natasha & Mae Iskander Ceramics Studio is designed for repeat visits. MPA Clay runs classes, workshops, and memberships out of the studio for makers at every level, which is a different kind of commitment than walking through a show. A gallery visit is a single afternoon. A ceramics membership is a weekly habit, the kind that turns a building into a routine rather than a destination you mean to get around to.
The studio gives residents another way to make arts programming a regular part of their routines. A studio with wheels and kiln access gives visitors a standing reason to be in the building on a Tuesday night, adding another opportunity to take part in the center's arts programming.
Café Monet at the Berlage Center
Café Monet opened May 6, run by KNEAD Hospitality + Design, the D.C. group behind Succotash in National Harbor, Mi Vida at the Wharf and Penn Quarter, and Beresovsky's Deli in Navy Yard. Executive Chef Mario Pineda oversees a pan-European menu rooted in French bistro tradition, and Beverage Director Darlin Kulla runs a wine list that tops out at a $235 bottle of Champagne alongside a $12.50 spritz menu built for lingering rather than rushing.
The room seats 54 inside under Palladian windows, with another 50 seats on a patio built around a marble fountain when the weather allows. Reservations are available through OpenTable and Resy. Breakfast originally started later in the morning, and MPA and KNEAD moved it to a daily 8 a.m. start beginning in June.
Every check at Café Monet routes back into MPA's exhibition budgets, education programs, and community outreach, which means a couple splitting a mezze platter and a glass of Albariño on a Saturday afternoon is, functionally, underwriting the gallery next door without necessarily walking into it. Some café visitors also visit the galleries.
What This Means for Your Next Free Saturday
None of this required MPA to abandon its original home. The McLean Community Center on Ingleside Avenue still holds two galleries and MPA's office space, and the annual Summer Art Camps still run out of that building each year. The Berlage Center is additive, not a replacement, and the annual MPAartfest still returns to McLean Central Park each fall as its own outdoor event, separate from anything happening on Fleetwood Road.
If you're deciding whether a Saturday morning in McLean has room for something other than errands, here's what's actually on offer:
- Address: 6910 Fleetwood Road, on the ground floor of The Signet, across from Elm Street Park
- Galleries: free to visit, rotating shows across three named spaces
- MPA Clay: ceramics classes, workshops, and memberships in the Natasha & Mae Iskander Studio
- Café Monet: breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, and happy hour daily, reservations on OpenTable or Resy
Bruce Berlage, the MPA board member whose gift gave the building its name, is being recognized with a 2026 ArtsFairfax Award this fall for the same kind of long-view community investment that got this building built in the first place. It took almost a decade, one failed site, and a funding model nobody would have guessed for a nonprofit gallery. What it produced is a corner of downtown McLean where visitors can explore the galleries, take a class, or share a meal.
If you're weighing what a neighborhood like this actually offers day to day, beyond the listings and the square footage, Rachel Van Zanten spends her time in these details because they're the ones that tell you whether a place is becoming more of itself or just more expensive. Let's connect.
