Former Martin Agency CEO Cavallo named new boss at renamed Branch Museum

The Branch Museum of Design on Monument Avenue. (Photos courtesy Branch Museum)

The Branch Museum of Design has a new top boss and a slightly new name to ring in the New Year.

Former Martin Agency CEO Kristen Cavallo has been hired as executive director of the museum at 2501 Monument Ave. She replaces former Executive Director Heather Ernst, who is moving out of state to be closer to family. 

Cavallo’s arrival coincides with a name change for the Branch, which eliminated “architecture” from what long had been known as the Branch Museum of Architecture & Design. 

The new position marks an industry change for the 30-year advertising veteran, who retired a year ago from the Richmond-based Martin Agency and from its international sister company MullenLowe Group. She had been CEO at MullenLowe since 2022. 

Kristen Cavallo

Upon announcing Cavallo’s departure last year, Martin parent company Interpublic Group said that Cavallo intended to get more involved in political and societal causes. 

But Cavallo said in an interview this week with BizSense that it wasn’t until a long walk across Spain last year at the start of her retirement that she realized what she wanted to do next.

With more free time on her hands, Cavallo embarked on a monthlong trek of the historic Camino del Norte and the Camino Francés, two sections of the famous Spanish pilgrimage route, the Camino de Santiago. 

Cavallo said that as she backpacked through northern Spain, staying in rectories and hostels, she realized she wasn’t ready to leave a creative industry. Upon her return to Richmond, she planned to get a part-time job at a museum. 

Just a few weeks after returning home, she received a call from Branch trustee Kelly O’Keefe, asking if she would consider taking over as executive director for the newly coined Branch Museum of Design.

“It just felt like he’d been reading my mind in some ways but took it up five levels from whatever I’d been thinking,” Cavallo said. 

Now in the new role, Cavallo is excited to get started. She said the museum’s name change comes at a good time. With the more general title (“architecture” is now under the umbrella of design in the museum name), Cavallo’s past creative work can be an aid to her new venture.

“Design for me is pervasive, and it’s a bigger term. Certainly architecture fits within design, but design is also bigger than architecture … the broadness of the term ‘design’ made the opportunity for me even more exciting and captivating,” she said. 

As for her original retirement goal of trying to pursue social activism? That’s an ambition Cavallo said can be continued at the Branch Museum. With its central location on Monument Avenue, a place Cavallo said is a sort of metaphor for what Richmond stands for and represents, there is certainly work for the museum to do in that arena. 

“I absolutely think there is a place for the Branch Museum’s voice to have a say in what Richmond does next,” she said. 

The Branch Museum resides in the 27,000-square-foot Tudor Revival-style Branch House. 

As the Branch moves into 2025, some exhibitions planned before Cavallo’s arrival still will be on display. But with her creative brain always on, Cavallo already has some ideas for the museum, which spans exhibits on everything from poetry to typography to tattoos, highlighting the different forms of art Richmond has to offer.

“I think this is an opportunity for museums to invite new audiences in and to think of younger people and artistic people who maybe are incredibly gifted artists but who might not have felt like museums would project a place they wanted to be,” Cavallo said. 

The Branch museum remains closed until Jan. 24 for exhibition installation. The official rebranding for the Branch Museum of Design is set for this spring. 

With a staff of less than 10, the Branch Museum has a storied history in Richmond. It operates in the historic 27,000-square-foot Tudor Revival-style Branch House, designed by architect John Russell Pope and built from 1917 to 1919. 

After making it onto the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, the Branch House opened to the public as the Virginia Center for Architecture in 2005. The museum was rebranded to the Branch Museum of Architecture & Design in 2015. 

The nonprofit operated with $568,000 in revenue and $593,000 in annual expenses, according to its most recent public financial reports issued to the IRS in 2023.