The Art Village Gallery was a pioneer in establishing the South Main Arts District in Memphis. The gallery caters to artwork from Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia. In this interview you will hear from Ephraim Urevbu, the gallery's owner and founder.
Roy M. Close, Vice President, Special Projects, Artspace
Over the last decade, Artspace Consulting has worked with many clients – arts organizations, arts councils, foundations, government agencies, and, occasionally, individuals – all of them seeking to tap into our unique experience and skills. But what are those skills? What do we know, and what are the things we’re good at?
In Memphis as in other places, artists struggle daily with a multitude of issues, from securing affordable housing, to raising capital, to just having a space to showcase their work. This month, Marco Pavé, an artist, musician, writer, and local arts advocate and a Memphis native writing for the Artspace project in Memphis, the South Main Artspace Lofts interviews local artists and a special art collective.
Artspace Consulting is currently working with the Duluth Art Institute (DAI), located in Duluth, Minnesota, to help them assess their current space usage and make decisions about the future of their facilities.
How does the focus on art’s role in city economies affect real-life working artists, for whom issues of affordability, community, and resources are key? Increasingly, artists have wanted to find a balance between the creative flows that make artistic life possible and the financial stability that makes “normal” life—being able to pay bills and care for one’s family—possible.
Artspace Immersion is known for bringing together community leaders from around the country to learn about nonprofit development and arts facility management. For the newly launched Artspace Immersion: Detroit, geographic scope has narrowed, focusing on a variety of nonprofits all in one city.
Roy M. Close, Vice President of Special Projects, Artspace
In this spotlight on Hastings, Minnesota, Roy Close, Vice President of Special Projects at Artspace illustrates how an Artspace project receives the green light using a powerful tool developed by the Artspace consulting team: the Arts Market Survey.
Artspace was formed in 1979 as a response to a prevalent and destructive belief: that artists are barriers to economic growth that must be removed to enable “progress.” In the 1970s, ‘80s, ‘90s and still today, this belief justified the eviction of countless artists and culture bearers from various “art spaces” so those properties could be reclaimed for more traditionally profitable uses, resulting in the gentrification of many cultural enclaves and communities.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled his plan for housing in the City, with El Barrio's Artspace PS109 highlighted as one of 11 case studies of affordability.
Before Artspace begins construction, we regularly connect with local community leaders and artists in each of the cities where we’re in development, providing art-based community engagement. This connection to a project creates dynamic energy —contributing to healthy and sustainable growth once the building is in operation for resident artists, commercial tenants and the surrounding neighborhood.
Artspace pioneered the use of Low Income Housing Tax Credits for affordable artist housing with our first project in St. Paul. Over the years we helped codify artist preference in federal housing law and developed a set of best practices for artist selection.
As Artspace enters its 36th year of operation, we're proud of what we've accomplished. This year has been one of continued growth, sustained affordability and new opportunities for artists.
Be inspired by the real-life stories and lessons these problem-solvers, idea chasers encountered in their quest to impact their communities in Carolyn Holbrook's book "Extraordinary Journeys: Tapping the Creative Place, Inside and Out".
At the Artspace annual meeting in 2013, board member Rich Martin shared his insights on the lessons Artspace learned on its first real estate project in the late 1980s.
It's been an amazing year at Artspace, with new projects, grand openings, successful events and new homes for great artists! Take a look back at some of the highlights of 2013.
At the beginning of 2013, we published a piece by Kelley Lindquist on the Artspace approach to Creative Placemaking. Now we follow that up with an examination of the movement and some thoughts on the future.
Join us in congratulating Founding Director of Dance Place Carla Perlo, winner of the 2013 Mayor's Arts Award for Excellence in Service to the Arts! Dance Place is located in Brookland Artspace Lofts.
Artspace's Shawn McLearen was invited to testify before the New York City Council's Committee on Cultural Affairs on October 21. Read his testimony on Making New York Affordable for Artists.
In January of 2013, the Office of the City Coordinator in the City of Minneapolis published a report about the city's creative vitality showing Minneapolis area art economy is the sixth biggest in the nation.
Kresge CEO Rip Rapson addresses the League of Historic American Theatres' conference
CEO of The Kresge Foundation, Rip Rapson, delivered an insightful keynote at The Cowles Center during the League of Historic American Theatres' recent conference, of which Artspace was a sponsor.
What do we know about the 2.1 million artists in the United States' labor force? To help answer that question, the NEA today released "Equal Opportunity Data Mining: National Statistics about Working Artists."
“I wanted to work with a wider range of ideas not in my painting or in my artistic practice, ideas beyond 2-D that explored critical practice and social participation,” Driessen explains. He’s accomplished this by turning not only the garage but also areas throughout the yard into research, collaboration and exhibition space.
In art school, Phil Hansen developed an unruly tremor in his hand that kept him from creating the pointillist drawings he loved. Hansen was devastated, floating without a sense of purpose. Until a neurologist made a simple suggestion: embrace this limitation ... and transcend it. Taking a cue from his own artistic journey, Phil Hansen challenges us to spark our creativity by thinking inside the box.
“Artists as the ‘shock troops of gentrification." That’s a quote by art historian/critic Rosalyn Deutsche included by Creative Time in a recent email invitation to its upcoming summit on the “contributions and complicity of culture in the development of 21st century urban space.
I travel probably 26 weeks a year, and wherever I go, people are ready to talk about arts-led community transformation under the umbrella of “creative placemaking,” and they are ready to have a complex, nuanced exchange.
Ian David Moss helps funders, government agencies, and others support the arts more effectively by harnessing the power of data to drive informed decision-making. He's also one of the brains behind Createquity, a unique virtual think tank exploring the intersection of the arts with a wide range of topics. Ian has written frequently about creative placemaking - read his latest here.
Although Artspace develops real estate, we work in many ways that fundamentally differ from traditional real estate development. Here are a few of the core principles that differentiate our work from more typical, for-profit real estate development.
Nicodemus, principal of Metris Arts Consulting, is a leading voice in arts and community development. Check out her recent thoughts on the state of creative placemaking. (Originally published in the Grantmakers in the Arts Reader, Vol 23. No 2., Summer 2012).
Sailboat Bend resident artist Nerissa Street demystifies "The Lucky Break" that has traditionally separated prosperous artists from starving ones, and explains that it is not just what happens "when preparation meets opportunity," as Seneca says, but an essential, yet subtly elusive shift in mindset that must take place before any commercial success follows.
In the past 10 years, unprecedented developments in the operating environment have placed radical new demands on arts and culture organizations. After 50 years focused on growth and longevity, changes in public participation, technological access to the arts, demographic shifts, and new forms of resource development have revealed that there are critical new organizational structures needed to thrive in this new era for the arts.
The Walker Art Center, a contemporary-art and performance center in Minneapolis, has launched a unique conceptual art pop-up store called Intangibleswhere many of the items for sale in are interactions rather than objects. “People want life experiences and memories that aren’t mass-produced for consumption, that are special and created by an artist,” commented Christine Kuan, chief curator for Artsy.
Artspace Immersion: Twin Cities is a FREE 18-month cohort program for Twin Cities-based arts, creative, and cultural organizations to advance their facility and space-related goals. Deadline December 15.
Watch these amazing stories in this video short which includes footage shot by Artspace-affiliated artists around the country, featured artists showing and talking about their work, their spaces and their communities.