After recently hosting an exhibit and publishing a book, D.C.’s 9:30 Club is trying on another form of media: television.

This spring, the venue will debut a 12-episode series called Live At 9:30. The program, described as a variety show, premieres in April on public television networks.

The show’s first episodes will include recent performances at the club, including shows by Ibeyi, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Garbage, Tove Lo and The Arcs. D.C. native Henry Rollins, comic Hannibal Buress and Bob Boilen of NPR’s All Songs Considered are among the program’s hosts.

“Each cinematic, one-hour episode of Live At 9:30 will feature a collection of acts from different genres, interspersed with insightful and entertaining interviews, short films, and comedic bits,” says a press release. Released monthly, the shows will be structured like “an inverted Saturday Night Live, with 80 percent music and 20 percent everything else,” the Washington Post reports.

Live at 9:30 is underwritten by website builder Squarespace, high-end manufacturer Shinola and Destination D.C., the District marketing firm whose “D.C. Cool” campaign brands the nation’s capital as a magnet for stylish young people with disposable income.

Full episodes of Live at 9:30 will also be viewable on the show’s official website. Watch a teaser for the show on Vimeo.

So why is it that this week, as 9:30 Club celebrates its 35th anniversary, the venue is attracting criticism for allegedly whitewashing its multihued history?

The controversy began at the World’s Fair, 9:30 Club’s weeklong anniversary bash that kicked off Tuesday night. At the VIP reception, scores of people lined up to peruse an exhibit of 9:30 Club ephemera, spanning an impressive collection of photos, flyers, memorabilia and video from the club’s colorful past. But at least one attendee left the show with a searing question: Where was the black history?

Kristi Riggs, a stylist and fashion designer who lives in D.C., says she’s seen plenty of black artists perform at 9:30 Club over the years, including Erykah Badu, The Roots, Jill Scott and numerous hip-hop groups in the ’90s. But their memories are drowned in the sea of pale faces currently on display at the venue. That’s according to a post Riggs published on her Facebook page that has begun to circulate widely online.

“[I’m] so SICK of white people conveniently erasing the contributions of black people. Especially, the black people that have made you rich,” Riggs wrote. “I can count on one hand how many black faces were in the photo exhibit that covered the walls of the entire club.”

Riggs’ post has touched a nerve, racking up more than 100 comments. Many express disappointment. Some seem unsurprised. Others point to a need for more black-owned venues in D.C. A few call for a boycott of 9:30 Club.

Take a close look at the World’s Fair exhibit — open through Saturday — and you’ll find a colorful mosaic, but one that’s more white than brown. Flyers plaster the walls, harking back to punk and punkesque bands that played the venue once upon a time: the B-52’s, Einstürzende Neubauten, The Replacements, hundreds more. A screen plays live footage from a Jesus Lizard show. Fugazi’s gear occupies the stage.

Meanwhile, the bass guitar played by Trouble Funk’s Big Tony is displayed alongside Fugazi’s gear. Video of a recent Leon Bridges show plays on a loop, projected onto a massive cube. Tucked away in a green room, there’s a cardboard standup of the late godfather of go-go, Chuck Brown, not far from the hair dryer 9:30 Club purchased for the late godfather of soul, James Brown.

Artists of color aren’t invisible at the World’s Fair. But they are outnumbered.

Riggs is a longtime 9:30 Club patron who considers herself part of the venue’s extended family. She attended the exhibit’s VIP reception Tuesday night, hoping to reflect on nights she spent there — especially during the ’90s, when D.C. was still Chocolate City.

“I was really excited to go [to the exhibit] because the 9:30 Club has always been near and dear to my heart,” Riggs says in a phone call. “You always know when you’re headed to a show at the 9:30, it’s going to be a special night.”

But she was taken aback by the amount of space dedicated to white punk rockers. This 9:30 Club didn’t feel like the one she knew. “There were just so many voids, in terms of the timeline,” she says. Disappointed and hurt, she left the party, and typed out her feelings on Facebook.

To Riggs, the exhibit’s relative lack of melanin brought up bigger issues — namely her sense that today’s whiter, wealthier D.C. is overwriting its black history.

“Erasure is racism,” Riggs says. “[White newcomers] just want to pick it up from here, like, ‘Oh, thanks for creating this really cool city that we’re all clambering to move to — it’s really wonderful and colorful and fabulous. But we don’t need you anymore now. We’ll take it from here.'”

Particularly in the neighborhood 9:30 Club has called home for 20 years, that erasure seems ubiquitous. Once segregated, largely poor and African American, the U Street area is now lined with pricey residential buildings and teeming with white revelers most nights of the week. In an apparent act of swagger-jacking, an apartment building called The Ellington nods to the neighborhood’s jazz heritage, but shuts out lower-income residents with rents north of $2,500.

To many, the change stings — and sometimes it feels intentional. When black-owned U Street mainstay The Islander closed in 2013 following a bitter feud with new residents, owner Addie Green told the Washington Post, “It’s the kind of change I believe Washington wants.”

To some extent, 9:30 Club has participated in that change. I.M.P. Productions, the venue’s owner, took over operations of U Street institution Lincoln Theatre in 2013. The company immediately brought new life to the historically black, city-owned venue, which had gone underutilized for years. But the first bookings under I.M.P. control were white acts, a decision that seemed out of touch with U Street’s history.

About the all-white bookings, I.M.P.’s Seth Hurwitz said at the time, “We are going to try all kinds of things… But, ultimately, the audience for the Lincoln will be determined by what does well.”

Riggs suspects that as D.C. has grown whiter, 9:30 Club — whose spokesperson declined to comment for this story — has followed suit.

“As the population in D.C. became more white, their bookings became more white,” Riggs says.

For a venue with such a diverse history, she says, that feels like a slap in the face.

“Those African-American artists of all genres helped to cultivate the culture that is known as the 9:30 Club. It’s become known as a beacon of cool,” Riggs says. “And if they think that all happened because of punk-rock music, they’re absolutely mistaken.”

Top photo by Flickr user Heaton Johnson used under a Creative Commons license.

A 264-page hardcover slab with photos and tales from the venue’s history, 9:30: The Book will include stories from original clubowner Dody DiSanto, Public Enemy’s Chuck D, The Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl, Ian MacKaye of Minor Threat and Fugazi, songwriters Natalie Merchant and Sarah McLachlan and the club’s current owners, Seth Hurwitz and Rich Heinecke. Expected out in January, it’s available for preorder.

The book coincides with a three-day anniversary party at the V Street club, the 9:30 World’s Fair, taking place Jan. 5 through 7. 9:30 Club is calling the event a “funhouse of interactive, jaw-dropping imagery chronicling 35 years of memories and memorabilia.” A limited number of free tickets are up for grabs now.

The 9:30 Club opened in 1980 at 930 F St. NW and quickly became the city’s most consistent alt-rock venue, hosting early performances from bands across new wave, no wave, punk rock and D.C. hardcore. Go-go band Trouble Funk played the F Street spot’s final show in 1996 before 9:30 relocated to the former WUST Radio Music Hall at 815 V St. NW. The Smashing Pumpkins played the first gig there. (If you’re thirsty for more history, check out the Washington Post‘s 2010 oral history of the club.)

Today, the 9:30 Club is generally considered D.C.’s best music venue and one of the top clubs in the country.

Top photo: Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney performs at the 9:30 Club in February 2015.

In a statement, the I.M.P. chairman and Merriweather Post Pavilion operator says:

The Freefest was this fantastic product of a crossroads of [Richard] Branson [founder of the Virgin Group] and some very creative people at Virgin. The mixture got shaken up every year, and it always settled at the last possible moment for that year. That was part of the spontaneous magic that everyone could pick up on I think. Unfortunately, the pieces are not all there right now with Virgin. Whether they are again who knows. But the Freefest concept is fantastic and we are exploring options to continue it at Merriweather.

A spokesperson for Virgin Mobile USA announced the cancellation in a statement published by the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun. According to both outlets, the statement says VMU will instead make a “significant donation” to the organization that Freefest normally benefits: the Sasha Bruce RE*Generation House in D.C.

The Virgin Mobile Festival began in 2006 and went free-admission in 2009 when it debuted at Merriweather in Columbia, Maryland. In prior years the event took place at Baltimore’s Pimlico Race Course and other locations in Canada.

Previous Freefest lineups ran the gamut from flashy EDM to indie to R&B; last year’s big acts included Vampire Weekend and Robin Thicke.

Photo by Flickr user Cesar Perdomo used under a Creative Commons license.