1708 Gallery's space at 319 W. Broad St.
Say it’s around 1978. You manage to get into a boisterous art opening at the original 1708 E. Main St., Shockoe location of 1708 Gallery. Maybe a thousand people come through that evening. Amid the activity you suggest to one of the founding artists that they’d created an organization that would endure more than four decades and, as of 2021, own a building on Broad Street.
Head-shaking laughter would’ve likely met your assertion.
Now, after years of effort, consideration and fundraising, the artist-run 1708 purchased 319 W. Broad St. for $1.1 million. This is a landmark in the gallery’s history that assures a future for one of the nation’s oldest artist-run spaces.
Sculptor and fabricator Tom Chenoweth, one of those present at the gallery’s creation, observes, “I don’t think any of us could’ve imagined that the place would still be going so long afterwards.” Joe Seipel, another co-founder, artist, and a retired Virginia Commonwealth University professor and arts administrator, chuckles at the thought. “We weren’t thinking 40 years ahead. At best, maybe a month or two. We were trying to pay the rent.”
Paying rent is the constant footfall behind both artists and the places where they show. Property acquisition isn’t often part of the picture. For the makers, earning enough to pay for creating the work and then getting that into the world through exhibitions that may lead to sales is a never-ending preoccupation. Nonprofit spaces endeavor to snag grants or assemble patrons who support the gallery’s mission. Sales may be part of the equation, as are fundraising events such as auctions and specialty shows. The cycle can be grueling for making the art possible while also sustaining the places where the public meets the work.
The gallery left Shockoe in 1993 to escape rises in both the river and rent. At the second location, 103 E. Broad St., the gallery continued as a place for contemporary work and participated in the revival of downtown Broad through the popular First Fridays Art Walk.
When the building’s owner, artist James Bradford, died intestate, this necessitated another move, up to the three-story 319 W. Broad, in September 2001. That relocation became possible in large part through the building’s owner, arts supporter and developer Tom Papa. Papa also credits conversations with longtime gallery friend Jay Barrows.
“Jay should get some credit here,” Papa says. “It was a timing thing; they were a little bit on life support. I had this building. Jay said, ‘Why don’t you renovate the building, and they can be your tenant?’ ” Papa adds, “And, plus, it’s 1708! It’s an important part of the city’s cultural life. These are my friends.”
Barrows recalls this crucial juncture with 1708 carrying building issues and financial factors that weighed heavy on the gallery.
"Tom had bought in on the present building with his brother-in-law, and they were trying to decide what to do with the lower floors," Barrows recalls. He and Papa brainstormed about 1708 moving into the space with a 10-year lease making the move more affordable and granting them a better location.
With the upstairs apartments, the arrangement made sense.
“The idea was that they’d become a healthy organization and eventually own the building,” Papa says. “It just took a little while.”
The gallery inaugurated the annual Wearable Art event (1998-2007), paired for three additional years with the adventurous InLight festival of illumination and art that began in 2008.
Through these and other projects, 1708 extended its reach into the wider Richmond community and to regional and national artists for presentation. Visiting artists have often come to Richmond for several days. This time-limitation aspect is set to change as the gallery’s building features three large three-room apartments that will became work/live studios.
1708 Gallery Executive Director Amy Smith
Executive Director Emily Smith sits in the gallery’s front window on a sunny afternoon to discuss 1708’s big get while dog walkers and passersby wave. “We definitely have a neighborhood here,” she says. Of those upstairs apartments, now under separate management until such time as the gallery can begin their transition, Smith says, “This is a huge opportunity. They’re beautiful spaces with massive windows and north and south light. Couldn’t be better for an artist.”
She reflects on the benefit of the gallery’s opportunity to offer extended residencies, “as opposed to them landing here on a Monday, staying three to four days for installing and then leaving.” The gallery established a relationship with the nearby Linden Row Inn, where since 2009 off-site exhibitions have been held.
Smith explains how the idea of purchasing the building coalesced around the time of the gallery’s 40th-anniversary celebration in 2018. How to properly commemorate this accomplishment? A big party? An event? InLight added considerable wattage to 1708’s 30th anniversary.
“And in true-to-form 1708 fashion, it came about organically,” Smith says. “I mean, that’s how the best things happen, not, ‘This is what we’re doing,’ and boom.”
The two major drivers to move on a purchase decision involved the sustainability of the gallery going forward, with monthly rates increasing and reaching the end of the second decade of the gallery’s lease. The board and patrons discussed the possibilities of staying or seeking another space.
Then came the realization of how the apartments could be utilized.
“Our future program will draw from a national application process and provide both live and work spaces and resources for artists to live and make artwork in Richmond,” Smith explains. “They’ll be informed by their stay here”; the length of time may vary by project and artist, but that is to be determined. “Importantly, our goal is for a fully funded program — artists will live rent-free and receive living and working stipends, essentially being paid to be here so that they're able to take time away from whatever jobs they have.”
Molly Dodge, who’s served in various capacities on the gallery’s board and as its immediate past president, underscores that the building purchase “came out of a conversation we’ve been having for a long time. And buying it from Tom Papa, who understood our challenges and also recognizes the energy that we bring here.”
Smith cites Dodge for shepherding the process along while Dodge speaks to the advantages for the gallery. In terms of the apartments, “We can do them all at once, one at a time, leave them as is. There’s flexibility to implement this program at a pace that really allows us to be thoughtful and diligent in our mission.”
The push to seek ownership at last came from a deluge.
Around 2 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 1, 2020, Smith received a call from the gallery’s alarm company about the tripping of the motion sensor. The news came as puzzlement to the director.
“And so I come down here,” Smith relates, “and there’s four firetrucks and people on the sidewalk, tenants standing around, and furniture out, and a big moving truck.”
She approached the firefighters to inquire about the situation. Then she turned to view the large front window. Smith witnessed torrents of water pouring through the gallery’s ceiling. She then dashed into the building, over objections of the firefighters, “ ‘Oh, you try to stop me,’ ” she remembers thinking. She began moving the fortunately wrapped work taken down from a recent exhibition, and after calling curator Park Myers and Operations Manager Christine Lockerby, Smith says, “I cried. I didn’t know what else to do.”
A tenant moving out apparently caught a piece of furniture against the sprinkler activator. Insurance covered the damage that included the ruined flooring. Some lighter moments occurred when ServPro came for the remediation. A gallery representative guided the workers into the basement, where, Smith says with a slight chuckle, “We needed to tell them, ‘That pile of wood is important to us, we need to save that. This pile of wood can go.’ ”
Planning for InLight occurred aided by large dehumidifiers in a bare space. “It felt like, in a year of true trauma, that this was our somewhat superficial trauma, but trauma nonetheless,” Smith says. “We had to navigate to get back to a kind of normal.”
At that point, Papa suggested to Smith that perhaps now would be a time to move toward ownership.
“Initially we thought we’d run the fundraising campaign and do everything at once,” Smith says, “but this kind of added a sense of urgency.”
After the purchase agreement was struck, Papa and his family made a significant contribution. The gallery intends to raise $2 million, $1 million for the building, half a million for operations and reserves, and the other half million seed money for the residencies.
“It sounds like a big amount,” Smith says, “but once you start turning those dollars toward practical things for the building, you realize it isn’t.”
The gallery’s annual operating budget is about half a million dollars.
Smith reflects, “That’s a drop in the bucket compared, for example, to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.”
Ownership brings different responsibilities — accessibility, for one. “Now we’ve got a giant building with a staircase,” Smith says. “We’ll have to get an elevator and also look at accessibility for all potential artists. We don’t want any barrier to what might happen upstairs — financially or logistically.”
Ownership also brings advantages that the gallery lacked before, including meeting qualifications for grants where permanency and ownership are required. After more than four decades, and much planning, 1708’s future is assured. The purchase became official Dec. 6, 2021.
The gallery’s current president, Caroline Wright, says that purchasing the building represents a commitment to the organization’s history. “The several important visionary artists who founded the gallery helped shape what we recognize as our contemporary arts scene. We want to continue encouraging the making of challenging, risk-taking work. And initiating a residency brings that mission to a larger and more meaningful scale.”
