For most of the last decade, if you asked a McLean neighbor where to find the art gallery, the answer was some version of "at the Community Center." That wasn't wrong. It also wasn't quite right, and the confusion ran deep enough that McLean Project for the Arts staff have spent years correcting people who assumed the nonprofit's biggest annual event was actually run by the county recreation building it shared a roof with. This year, that confusion resolves itself in the opposite direction from what you'd expect. The gallery finally gets its own front door. The festival, for the first time in nineteen years, does not.
That's the actual story behind McLean's busier-than-usual fall arts calendar, and it's worth understanding before you plan around it, because the two moves point in opposite directions and both change how you'll spend a Saturday downtown.
An identity problem a decade in the making
McLean Project for the Arts has operated out of the McLean Community Center on Ingleside Avenue since 1990, running the Atrium and Emerson galleries alongside the Susan B. DuVal Art Studio. It's not the first time the nonprofit has had to find temporary quarters elsewhere. Back in 2016, when the Community Center underwent a major renovation, MPA relocated its galleries and classrooms to a leased storefront at Chain Bridge Corner Shopping Center for about two years, a stopgap arrangement squeezed between a CVS and Kazan Restaurant until the Ingleside building reopened.
What's happening now is not that. MPA's Executive Director Lori Carbonneau has said the nonprofit has struggled at times to separate its identity from the Community Center it shares space with, to the point that visitors regularly assumed the annual MPAartfest was a Community Center program rather than an MPA one. This spring, the organization stopped renting a fix and bought a building. MPA acquired the property at The Signet, a condominium building at 6910 Fleetwood Road, in September 2024, and spent the following year and a half building out a nearly 6,000-square-foot arts center on the ground floor, directly across from Elm Street Park in downtown McLean.
What actually opened this spring
The MPA Berlage Arts & Education Center held its opening in spring 2026 after passing final electrical, plumbing, structural and mechanical inspections. The $6.25 million facility, named for longtime McLean donor and MPA board member Bruce L. Berlage, holds three galleries, including a black-box installation space designed for digital and media displays and even small concerts, a folding wall that can combine it with the main solo-and-two-artist gallery next door, classrooms, a meeting room available for private events, and a dedicated ceramics studio called MPA Clay, housed in the Natasha & Mae Iskander Ceramics Studio.
The part of the building that will actually pull foot traffic, though, is Café Monet. Developed by Knead Hospitality + Design, the James Beard-nominated group behind D.C. restaurants like Mi Vida and Succotash, the café opened its doors May 6, 2026, under Executive Chef Mario Pineda with a pan-European, French bistro-rooted menu and a drink program overseen by Beverage Director Darlin Kulla. It seats 54 inside with another 50 seasonal seats outdoors, runs breakfast through dinner from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., and pours a full bar, including a dedicated spritz list. Revenue from the café funds MPA's programming directly rather than sitting alongside it as an amenity.
Here's where the two MPA addresses stand as of this month:
| MPA at McLean Community Center | MPA Berlage Arts & Education Center | |
|---|---|---|
| Address | 1234 Ingleside Ave. | 6910 Fleetwood Rd. |
| What's there | Atrium and Emerson galleries, DuVal Studio | Three galleries, MPA Clay ceramics studio, classrooms |
| Food | None | Café Monet, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. |
| Status this month | Galleries were dark for Summer Art Camps through August 14 and are reopening now | Open, with Café Monet taking reservations |
| Parking | Free lot at the Community Center | Free indoor garage adjacent to the entrance |
MPA's Community Engagement Director Elizabeth Murphy framed the new building's purpose plainly:
"We have a lot of families in the neighborhood, so we want to make sure there's programming that suits families and people who are lovers of art and food, frankly."
That's a fair description of what the Berlage Center is actually for. It's not a museum annex. It's a building designed to make a weekday errand on Fleetwood Road turn into lunch, in roughly the same way Elm Street Park across the street already pulls people outside.
The festival that just went the other way
While MPA was busy carving out its own address, the event most associated with its name did the opposite. MPAartfest, the juried outdoor art and craft show that has run in some form for eighteen years, is now called McLean Artfest, and for the first time it is jointly produced by the McLean Community Center rather than run solely by MPA. MPA continues to manage the artist jury process, exhibitor applications and artist relations, but the Community Center now shares producer credit and top billing.
The 2026 festival, its 19th edition, lands on Sunday, October 4, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at McLean Central Park, with festival parking directed to the Dolley Madison Library lot on Oak Ridge Avenue. Expect the same bones that have made it a fall fixture: more than 30 juried fine artists and craftspeople from across the mid-Atlantic, a Children's Art Walk, gourmet food trucks, a beer and wine garden, and live local music. It's free admission, held rain or shine with no rain date.
The rename and the shared production credit aren't cosmetic. They formalize what MPA had been trying to untangle in its own building for years: the assumption that anything MPA-adjacent belongs to the Community Center. This year, that assumption is finally accurate for the festival and finally inaccurate for the galleries. If you've been vaguely confused about which organization runs what in downtown McLean, that confusion had a real basis, and this fall is when it gets sorted in both directions at once.
Building a fall weekend around both anchors
The Alden Theatre, the Community Center's 383-seat professional performance venue, remains the third fixed point on this map and hasn't moved an inch. Built in 1975, its 2025-26 season ran from a fall dance program through Pat Hazell's comedy show in May, with a Lunar New Year dance celebration in February and a Jazz at Lincoln Center crooners program in April filling out the middle of the calendar. The Alden typically announces its next season in late August, based on last year's announcement date of August 18, so a new lineup should surface any day now for anyone who wants to plan performance nights alongside gallery visits.
For anyone treating this as an actual calendar rather than a news item, here's a reasonable way to use all three pieces over the next several weeks:
- Stop by the MPA Berlage Center on Fleetwood Road for a Café Monet lunch and a walk through whichever exhibit is up in the installation gallery, now that the building has a few months of programming under its belt.
- Check the Community Center galleries once they've reopened from the summer camp closure, since the Atrium and Emerson spaces are back in rotation and it's the original, free half of MPA's footprint.
- Watch for the Alden's new season announcement in the coming days. Last year's lineup went public on August 18, and shows for the following fall, from a Broadway songbook evening to a WWII family history performed as one-man theater, went on sale in the following weeks.
- Block off Sunday, October 4, for McLean Artfest at Central Park, and park at the Dolley Madison Library lot rather than circling the park itself.
None of this requires deciding whether McLean is the right place to put down roots. It's simply what changed this year for the people who already have. A neighborhood's art scene rarely reorganizes itself this visibly in a single season, and when it does, the two moves happening at once, one nonprofit finally getting its own address after a decade of borrowed identity, and its signature event choosing to share one, are worth knowing before you show up at the wrong building looking for the wrong thing.
If you're weighing a move to McLean and want a read on what a given block is actually like day to day, not just what the listing photos show, Vie Nguyen works this market closely enough to walk you through it street by street. Schedule your concierge consultation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
