FEATURE
CAMILLE LEFEVRE
AUGUST 9, 2016
So artists can celebrate
themselves: Artspace’s
remarkable work with
cultural communities
FOR DECADES, VICKY HOLT TAKAMINE—A
KUMU HULA (TEACHER OF HULA),
SOCIAL ACTIVIST, COMMUNITY LEADER
AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE PA’I
FOUNDATION IN HONOLULU—HAS SOUGHT
CREATIVE SOLUTIONS THAT WOULD RECTIFY
THE MANY WRONGS HER PEOPLE, AND NATIVE
ARTISTS IN PARTICULAR, HAVE LABORED
UNDER.
“We have a lot of challenges in the Native
Hawaiian community,” she explains, citing hotels
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built in sacred locations and her people’s overall
invisibility in their homeland. “For artists, those
challenges also include getting their work seen,
being included in exhibitions, experiencing
critiques,” she continues. “We’ve found we have
to raise our own profile in order to get noticed.”
In 2008, in another effort to find a profile-raising
strategy, Takamine visited the artist live/work
projects in Seattle developed by Artspace,
a nonprofit real-estate developer based in
Minneapolis. The evening she stopped at the
Tashiro Kaplan Artist Lofts/Tashiro
Arts Building, her life changed. “The
artists in the building had put together
an exhibition on the homeless people
in the community and had used
diverse media—video, sculpture,
paintings—to tell their stories,”
Takamine recalls. “These artists had
engaged with the homeless, and
their compassion and passion for
social justice, and wanting to make a
difference, was palpable.”
She also realized that “what I love
about Artspace’s buildings is they’re
always engaging, warm and inviting.
They’re living entities with character
because of the artists living and
working there. And they speak to you
the minute you walk in.” Takamine
turned to her host, Kelley Lindquist,
Artspace’s president, and declared:
“Okay. I want one of these. How do I
get one of these?”
In January, Takamine gets her wish
when Ola Ka ’Ilima Artspace Lofts
in Honolulu breaks ground. The
new, mixed-use arts development—
created with support from the Ford
Foundation, the National Endowment
for the Arts and ArtPlace, and with
local developer Hui Kauhale, Inc.—is
located in the Kaka‘ako neighborhood
of Honolulu, a transitional area
between downtown and Waikiki
Beach.
In addition to 84 units of affordable
live/work space for low-income artists
and their families, Ola Ka ’Ilima will
include 10,000 square feet of green
space and more than 7,000 square
feet of community and commercial
space for arts-oriented businesses.
Takamine’s PA’I Arts & Culture
Center, which serves Native Hawaiian
dancers, musicians, visual artists,
cultural practitioners and others
interested in experiencing Native
Hawaiian cultural traditions, will
occupy the first floor.
Moreover, the project is in a strategic
location near the Honolulu Museum
of Art, Blaisdell Concert Hall,
Hawaii Opera Theatre and Hawaii
Children’s Discovery Center. Ola
Ka ’Ilima’s presence in the arts
corridor, Takamine says, will provide
tremendous opportunities and
“
What I love about
Artspace’s buildings is
they’re always engaging,
warm and inviting.
They’re living entities
with character because
of the artists living and
working there.”
— Vicky Holt Takamine, Executive
Director of the PA’I Foundation
exposure for its resident artists. “This
space will be the poster child for
how to do construction in Hawaii and
how to provide affordable housing for
artists and others,” she says. “There’s
nothing like it in Hawaii.”
grounds, to the home of a Native artist
who grows all of her materials in her
yard, to a volcano that’s been erupting
for 30 years and camping in the forest.
As a result, Ola Ka ’Ilima will include
green space for community gardens,
plentiful light and air, and views to the
mountains and sea for inspiration.
“Whether music, dance, painting,
sculpture, lei making or jewelry, our
traditional and contemporary art is
inspired by the nature around us,”
she says. “Kelley and his staff had a
feeling for this.”
Artspace’s work with distinct
cultural communities isn’t limited
to Hawaii. Nor is it something new
for the nonprofit organization. In the
early 1990s, the City of Duluth in
northern Minnesota asked Artspace
to explore the potential of Washington
Junior High, a 1911 brick structure
vacant since 1992. The surrounding
A history of working with
culturally specific communities
Ola Ka ’Ilima was also designed to
reflect and support the lives and
work of Hawaii’s Native artists. After
visiting the Artspace projects in
Seattle, Takamine invited Lindquist
to Honolulu. “I told him, ‘You need
to know my people and the kind of
buildings I don’t want’,” she says.
Takamine took Lindquist, his staff
and funders to a hotel built on temple
OLA KA L’ILIMA ARTSPACE LOFTS RENDERING
VICKY HOLT TAKAMINE, PHOTO: PA’I FOUNDATION
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OLA KA L’ILIMA ARTSPACE LOFTS RENDERING
neighborhood was home to a
community of Native Ojibwe, as well
as a vocal contingent of residents
opposed to their presence.
After spending time with the Ojibwe
residents, learning about their
definitions of art and creativity,
Artspace staff designed the
school’s spaces to accommodate
multigenerational households.
Artspace encouraged Ojibwe artists,
and other artists of color in the
city, to apply for residency. In turn,
members of the Native community
spoke in favor of Artspace’s vision of
a culturally sensitive artist-housing
project.
But during City Hall meetings,
Artspace staff faced a barrage
of invective, including racist and
homophobic comments (the latter
of which was directed at Lindquist,
who is gay)—and worse. Nonetheless,
Duluth’s City Council voted to fund
the project. When Washington Studios
opened in 1996, artists of color
occupied 21 of its 39 units.
Since Artspace developed its first
project, the Northern Warehouse
Artists Cooperative in 1990 in the
Lowertown area of downtown St.
Paul, the organization has created
40 additional art spaces across the
country. “In virtually every case, we’ve
run up against people who have
opposed the idea of artist housing,
perhaps because they don’t believe
artists add value to communities, or
in some cases because they don’t
accept that many artists—of all
backgrounds—are genuinely poor and
facing extreme hardship,” Lindquist
recently wrote in the Star Tribune.
“In many cases, we also have had to
overcome the opposition to people
who have been upset by the diversity
of artists we embrace.”
singular visions for affordable artist
live/work housing and community
spaces to fruition.
Over coffee one afternoon, Lindquist
elaborates on a vision for Artspace
he says actually began during his
childhood. “One of my earliest
memories is of my Dad emphasizing
to me that everyone deserved a job,
that the color of their skin didn’t
matter,” he says. “I’ll also never
forget my Mom’s anger one day, after
a neighbor mentioned how upset
she’d be if a black family moved to
our neighborhood. My Mom was just
furious!”
“The Ford Foundation,” Lindquist
says, “had such tremendous vision in
offering us this opportunity to take the
extra years we need to develop trust
and understanding with communities
that have been marginalized.” (At
about the same time, the Kresge
Foundation began making significant
organizational investments in
Artspace, including in Artspace’s
capacity to work with and reflect
diverse communities.)
“So when I started Artspace more
than 30 years ago, I just naturally
hired whoever was qualified—no
matter their sexual orientation or
racial background,” he continues.
“And we reached out to marginalized
communities, including communities
of color, when developing projects,
to ensure we followed their wishes
in space development so they could
culturally celebrate themselves.”
By 2009, Artspace had completed
more than 20 buildings in which
artists could afford to live and work.
Then the Ford Foundation approached
Lindquist with a proposition he
couldn’t refuse: Time and funding to
work long-term with distinct cultural
communities in order to bring their
Not only did Artspace staff spend
time in prospective residents’ homes,
learning about their cultures, values
and artistic practices; the funding
also brought the artists to existing
Artspace projects where they could
“
In many cases, we also
have had to overcome
the opposition to people
who have been upset by
the diversity of artists we
embrace.”
— Kelley Lindquist, Artspace President
RED CLOUD INDIAN SCHOOL, PINE RIDGE RESERVATION
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THE ROLLING REZ
ON THE PINE RIDGE
RESERVATION IN
SOUTH DAKOTA
see firsthand other artists of color at work and
play.
Custom-designed resources for culturally
distinct communities
When Ford’s funding for culturally specific
programming was put in place, Artspace had
already started the conversations that would
result in El Barrio’s Artspace PS109 in East
Harlem, New York. The project opened last
year. Artspace teamed with local housing-rights
advocacy group, El Barrio’s Operation Fightback
on the project.
Ford’s funding (with support also from
Bloomberg Philanthropies, ArtPlace America
and other groups) helped transform the
abandoned public school building into an
arts facility with 89 units of affordable live/
work housing for artists and their families—87
percent of which are occupied by Dominican,
Puerto Rican or African-American families. El
Barrio also includes 10,000 square feet of space
for local arts organizations, including El Taller
Latino Americano (a cultural language and art
educational group).
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“Our live/work projects for artists can’t only
be about creating affordable housing for
culturally specific families,” Lindquist says. “The
projects also need to have a lot of community
space in which local cultural organizations
can find a home and that invite the immediate
neighborhood into the refurbished building,
so people feel the building is part of their
community.”
In South Dakota, the foundation’s funding
propelled the development Oglala Lakota
Artspace—a partnership between Artspace, First
Peoples Fund (a Native American nonprofit) and
Lakota Funds (a Native CDFI organization)—on
the Pine Ridge Reservation. A study conducted
KELLEY LINDQUIST AT THE EL BARRIO’S ARTSPACE PS109 GRAND
OPENING EVENT
“
Minds opened and changed
What Artspace has also done for Cooley Reuse Project,
which has been pivotal for us as leaders of the project, is
help us tailor Cooley’s low-income housing to the needs of
a culturally specific group in Detroit.”
–Nicole Pitts, Detroit resdient and community leader, and member of Artspace Immersion Detroit
by Artspace, First Peoples Fund and
Colorado State University, which
examined the American Indian
creative economy, found that artists
on the reservation not only need a
place to learn, create and exhibit
their work; they also need resources
brought to them, as the reservation
covers a vast geographic area.
The findings resulted in the first
phase of Oglala Lakota Artspace: The
Rolling Rez, a first-of-its-kind mobile
arts classroom and extension of
Lakota Funds services. Because of the
Rolling Rez, instructors can bring to
artists in all of the reservation’s nine
districts a plethora of resources—
from art instruction to expertise in
pricing, business planning, branding,
packaging and marketing.
civil rights theater group Junebug
Productions and the music school
Make Music NOLA.
“Once again we’ve met with a lot
of resistance, just as in Duluth, on
these projects,” Lindquist says. “But
by consulting with local cultural
groups on what they need to nurture
creativity, stability and prosperity in
their communities, we can create
affordable space for culturally specific
organizations that last forever.”
Artspace also consults with nascent
cultural organizations seeking to
develop their own projects. “We help
culturally specific groups learn how
to do the hard real-estate pieces
of the process so the building is
permanent,” Lindquist says. On the
northeast side of Detroit, for instance,
Nicole Pitts and her husband LaMar
Williams are hoping to transform
a 322,000-square-foot SpanishRenaissance style school (which
closed in 2010) into the Cooley High
Reuse Project.
The project is currently in the
predevelopment stage, Pitts says,
so “we’re reaching out to the
community to make sure we’re not
top down about decision making.” As
a member of Artspace Immersion
Detroit—a capacity-building cohort
of 11 organizations working together
to support artists and creating
affordable space for the arts in
Artspace’s work in the Northern
Plains also extends to North Dakota,
where collaboration with the Turtle
Mountain Tribal Arts Association
resulted in the creation of Minot
Artspace Lofts. The project includes
a gallery operated by Turtle Mountain
Tribal Arts Association, which exhibits
and sells work by Chippewa, Mandan,
Hidatsa, Arikara and Sioux artists.
Meanwhile, Artspace was also
working in New Orleans, partnering
with the nonprofit Providence
Community Housing to develop an
affordable artist live/work project
in the Treme neighborhood. “Ford
and Kresge appreciated that we
were already working with the
African-American community there,”
Lindquist says. The Bell Artspace
Campus, scheduled to open next year
in three school buildings abandoned
after Hurricane Katrina, will include
live/work housing for artists, and
office and community space for the
ARTSPACE RESIDENT ARTIST JOHNATHAN THUNDER, Photo: courtesy IAIA
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EL BARRIO’S ARTSPACE
PS 109 GRAND
OPENING
Photo: Carlos David
Detroit, supported in part by Kresge—Pitts
has reveled in “this amazing think tank. The
immersion program brings together people from
our community with the same ethos to help each
other. And we’ve also benefited from Artspace’s
expertise with development and construction
documents.”
Moreover, City Hall Artspace Lofts in Dearborn
is close by. “I recently toured the project and
it was so inspiring to view firsthand what the
possibilities can be for the project we’re working
on,” Pitts says. “What Artspace has also done
for Cooley Reuse Project, which has been pivotal
for us as leaders of the project, is help us tailor
Cooley’s low-income housing to the needs of
a culturally specific group in Detroit.” While
many socio-economic groups exist in northwest
Detroit, Pitts adds, she wants Cooley to become
a hub for education, startups, and arts and
cultural groups serving the African-American
community, while ensuring everyone feels
welcome.
Lindquist is quick to clarify that Artspace’s work
is “not about empowering culturally distinct
groups. Their traditions are already integral and
powerful. But through Artspace’s work, I want
to make sure I’m part of a nation-wide effort to
celebrate these cultures.”
Now more than ever, Lindquist continues, “We
need to give cultural groups ways to showcase
their unique identities in our buildings, and
invite everyone in so they can walk out with
their minds opened and changed.” Whenever
he’s experienced conflicts in Artspace buildings
between residents with different cultural
backgrounds, Lindquist recalls, “it’s amazing
how, as soon as they all start working together
on an art project, the conflicts go away.”
“Nationally, it’s been forgotten, or never learned,
that arts and culture is a way of healing and
a way of overcoming differences, and finding
a warmth and love in an expression of culture
rather than focusing on what may be perception
of differences,” he adds. “Often, I’ll start a
conversation with new stakeholders by talking
about my Swedish grandmother. Everyone has
a laugh, and then starts sharing their cultural
traditions. It’s the right way to communicate with
each other.”
Camille LeFevre is managing editor of The Line.
This story is part of a national series about the arts, housing, and community transformation, supported by Artspace.
Learn more at artspace.org/news
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