The Union for Contemporary Art building. Photo courtesy of The Union for Contemporary Art.
NAS’ partnership with the Wallace Foundation continues to foster collaboration and connections with grantees from The Wallace Foundation’s Advancing Well-being in the Arts Initiative. In anticipation of the upcoming Fall Peer Learning Community gathering in Omaha, Nebraska, we are featuring the host city organization, The Union for Contemporary Art.
First, we’d love to introduce our community to you and The Union for Contemporary Art. Can you tell us more about what your organization does and why it’s important to you?
The Union for Contemporary Art is a gallery, performance space, and community arts center located in Omaha, NE. We do a bit of everything: exhibitions, theatre, youth programming, artist support, community gardening, neighborhood arts, you name it. We’re a multidisciplinary organization with a very broad and inclusive understanding of “the arts”, but all of our work across all these programs is tied together by our mission: to use the arts as a vehicle for positive social change in our community.
Our two-building campus is located in North Omaha, at the corner of 24th and Lake Street, which, if you’re from Omaha, immediately means something to you. Omaha is a beautiful city, in many ways a welcoming city, but also a city where opportunities have long been unequally distributed. It was heavily redlined in the 1920s and 1930s, pushing Omaha’s Black community into North Omaha, which became, as a result, a regional hot spot for Black theatre, music, and art. If you’re on the tour in September and you hear us referring to the larger meeting room on the north side of our building as “the Blue Room”, to give a specific example: that room was a jazz club called McGill’s Blue Room from 1948 to 1963. It was a restaurant for another ten years. And then, as urban disinvestment hit this neighborhood hard in the ’70s and ’80s, it wasn’t anything. This building had been vacant for a decade before The Union took up occupancy in 2017. There just weren’t places where people in this neighborhood — predominantly Black, low income, not really connected to the rest of the city — could go to make or experience art.
The Union exists to make the arts accessible in North Omaha, to support and uplift this community that’s been ignored and underserved for so long, and, ultimately, to help our city become a more equitable and inclusive place.
The Union for Contemporary Art Abundance Garden Volunteers. Photo courtesy of The Union for Contemporary Art.
The September Wallace PLC will be taking place in your city, Omaha, Nebraska. What are some things you’re looking forward to sharing with the other Wallace Grantees as they spend time in your community?
As stated, North Omaha has a really rich cultural history, and we’re proud, as an organization, to be part of a little renaissance on this block. We’re down the street from the Omaha Star, which is I think one of the longest continuously-published Black newspapers in the country, but also from North Omaha Music and Arts, Culxr House, the Great Plains Black History Museum, and a bunch of other businesses and nonprofits that are really breathing life into this neighborhood. Go downtown, obviously, and check out the area around the Cottonwood, but also plan on spending some time in North O and getting to know the people here.
The Union for Contemporary Art’s Art Club. Photo courtesy of The Union for Contemporary Art.
What’s one thing you/your organization are struggling with right now, one thing you’re proud of, and what – if anything – our community can do to support you?
We’re proud to be launching — formally, on August 29 — our newest program, the Studio 24 Residency, which is a three-month residency that specifically supports artists from traditionally marginalized communities by inviting them to live and work at The Union and providing them the time, space, and resources to develop their creative practice. The studio may or may not be part of the PLC tour — painter Andrew Cimelli will be staying there in September — but either way, you should check out the page on our website to see photos of the studio, which is absolutely lovely, and you should direct any artists you know who might be a good fit for the program to fill out the eligibility form. We’d like to thank The Wallace Foundation for supporting this program. It’s something we’ve always felt strongly about doing, bringing artists here and providing them with opportunities to gain a deeper understanding of this community, and we’re very excited for what the future holds.
The Kali Baker Studio where Studio 24 Residents reside. Photo courtesy of The Union for Contemporary Art.
Lastly, is there anything you’d like to offer to the NAS community?
Earlier this year, on the markerboard in the lounge upstairs, one of the Fellows, I have no idea who, wrote, in really big block letters, “Make your art, Share your heart.” I pass by it every day. And I think, while you’re here, it’s worth really embracing that sentiment. Whether in the print shop, the ceramics studio, the Abundance Garden, or the Youth Studios, you’ll have the chance to try something new, some art form you haven’t experimented with before. I’m not promising it’s going to be easy — you should see me on the ceramics wheel, it’s not pretty — but, like falling in love, it’s going to be worth it. And you can do it, here. Anyone can. Everyone can.
Responses courtesy of Ben Curttright, the Grants & Database Manager at The Union for Contemporary Art.
