City to get Black arts center with new Bronzeville building
Facility to give more visibility for African-American artists
One of Milwaukee’s signature buildings is the lakefront’s Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Milwaukee Artist Resource Network last fall opened a new facility in the Historic Third Ward.
But Milwaukee has lacked a highprofile cultural center that focuses on Black visual artists.
That’s about to change, with construction to begin this spring on a building that will highlight Black art — while also bringing another attraction to Milwaukee’s emerging Bronzeville neighborhood.
The Bronzeville Center for the Arts will combine a renovated duplex, at 507 W. North Ave., with a glassy two-story addition built next door.
The privately financed $1.5 million development will feature a gallery, workshop space, the group’s office and a small warming kitchen so the center can host catered events.
The 6,650-square-foot building is designed to provide more visibility for Black artists, both from Milwaukee and throughout the world, while also creating a new cultural gathering space.
Such a place is badly needed, say its backers.
“It’s a huge deal,” said Kristen Hardy, a Milwaukee attorney and president of the Bronzeville Center for the Arts board, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “Because it’s something we currently don’t have in Bronzeville.”
“The African-American arts scene doesn’t get talked about,” said Della Wells, a Milwaukee artist and vice president of the center’s board.
Wells spoke at a recent meeting of the Bronzeville Advisory Committee, a city panel which makes recommendations on neighborhood projects to the Common Council.
The committee endorsed the proposal, and the council on Tuesday approved selling a vacant lot, at 517-519 W. North Ave., for the project. The development also needs Board of Zoning Appeals approval.
That 6,150-square-foot lot, which the city is selling for $24,600, will house the addition to the neighboring duplex. That duplex is owned by DSK LLC, a Fox Point-based group led by arts patron Deborah Kern.
The project is being funded with private equity and financing, according to a Department of City Development report. The owner’s representative on the development is Melissa Allen, who also operates Maures Development Group LLC.
Along with programs on the arts, culture and history of the African diaspora, the Bronzeville Center for the Arts will provide space for learning and cultural exchange and contribute to the Bronzeville neighborhood’s economic and cultural growth, according to the organization’s mission statement.
Lofty goals ‘we fully intend to realize’
The group's vision focuses on making art of the African diaspora “a central focus in the cultural consciousness of present and future generations,” that statement says.
Those are lofty goals, Hardy said, but are “goals that we fully intend to realize.”
The center is a response to a lack of knowledge about African-American art and history, and a dearth of Black art spaces in Milwaukee, said Mutope Johnson, a Milwaukee artist and the center's project manager.
The idea for the center has its roots in a group formed around 20 years ago by Johnson and Wells.
It was known as ABEA, or African-American Artists Beginning to Educate Americans about African-American Art. Its efforts included exhibits to showcase Milwaukee's Black artists.
Also, Wells began taking an active role in using Facebook to profile local Black artists.
Johnson said those efforts acquired a greater urgency when longtime Journal Sentinel art and architecture critic Mary Louise Schumacher left the newspaper in January 2019.
“Mary Louise Schumacher had a relationship with artists all over the city,” said Johnson.
“When you lose that part of it, it sort of isolates what's happening in the art world,” he said.
Johnson and Wells in 2019 began leading serious discussions about creating a Milwaukee center for Black visual artists.
Bronzeville, where both Johnson and Wells grew up, was a natural focus.
“Bronzeville has always had this rich history or arts, music and African-American culture,” said Hardy, who's Northwestern Mutual assistant general counsel.
Indeed, the neighborhood's history includes serving as home to clubs that saw performances from such legendary musicians as Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington.
Hardy got involved with the project in 2020 as she was buying a home in the nearby Halyard Park neighborhood.
The development took a big step forward in July 2021 when Kern's group, DSK LLC, quietly bought the North Avenue duplex for $94,000, according to city assessment records.
Plans for the arts center were publicly disclosed in December, when the Redevelopment Authority board approved selling the adjacent vacant lot to accommodate the addition.
Bronzeville is seeing other developments.
The biggest project is ThriveOn King, the $105 million conversion of the historic former Schuster's department store, 2153 N. King Drive.
It will feature 100,000 square feet of office space, anchored by the ThriveOn Collaboration, with Medical College of Wisconsin's community engagement programs and Greater Milwaukee Foundation's new headquarters.
The building also will have 89 apartments and 50,000 square feet of early child education and community space, including a food hall. Renovations are to begin in February.
Other Bronzeville developments include Dohmen Co. Foundation Inc.'s new headquarters, under construction at 2007 N. King Drive, and Niche Book Bar, coming to 1937 N. King Drive.
Also, arts-related neighborhood projects include new live-work space for artists near the intersection of North Phillips and West Meinecke avenues.
Meanwhile, America's Black Holocaust Museum is reopening on Feb. 25 at 401 W. North Ave., and is expanding to a nearby building at 324-332 W. North Ave.
The Bronzeville Center for the Arts will complement those arts-related developments, as well as other Black arts spaces such as 5 Points Art Gallery and Studios, 3514 N. Port Washington Ave., Johnson said.
5 Points, which opened in 2018, features a 3,000-square foot art gallery with a gift shop for professional visual art exhibitions and special events, nine artist work studios, a shared commercial kitchen and two artist residency apartments. It was developed at the former Johnson-Goolsby Funeral Home by artist Fatima Laster.
The Bronzeville center's activities will include a focus on arts-based education, careers and entrepreneurship, said Johnson, who's also a lecturer of art and design at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
The center's “big picture” vision is an emphasis on the benefits that creativity brings for everyone, not just visual artists, he said.
“Civilization has existed because of creativity,” Johnson said.