Franklin Arts down but not out

by Tom Donaldson
It’s a grand but down-and-out building.
The old Franklin Theater—on East Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis—was built in 1916 as the first freestanding theater in the Midwest. People came by streetcar, carriage or Model T to sit in wood and steel chairs before a metal-specked, painted-on screen. Silent films lasted twenty minutes. Admission was a dime.
The working-class majestic theater remained a community asset and dependable attraction into the Disco Age when, already degraded by a decade of suburban flight, the building—and the neighborhood—took a hit whose effects still linger today.
But, after a long and contentious incarnation as a porn theatre, the sturdy (if neglected) brick edifice has a new and nobler purpose as Franklin Art Works, a growing cultural amenity playing a tangible role in the revitalization of an inner-city neighborhood.
Despite its forlorn appearance, the nonprofit gallery and performance-space-to-be is quickly expanding its presence in the Twin Cities arts community and community at-large. Tim Peterson, director and sole full-time employee, believes organizations like Franklin Art Works (FAW) can serve not only as a unique venue for artists and art lovers, but as community-building enterprises for stricken neighborhoods.
“Basically, our mission is to engage the Twin Cities as a whole—a special emphasis on the Phillips neighborhood—with high-quality, innovative, inclusive arts programming and education,” said Peterson. “We want to be a major alternative space doing programming that is every bit the equal of museum programming, but with a local agenda.”
It’s a lofty goal, to be sure, particularly when many non-profits are struggling to maintain funding. Adding to the challenge is the center’s location “across the freeway,” in a part of town not exactly considered an arts destination. But the timely confluence of site, opportunity, need and his own appropriate experience gives Peterson ample reason to be optimistic.
“The reason arts organizations are often the first developments in areas that are seen as ‘troubled’ is because they draw people in,” said Peterson. “And we want to be a cultural amenity to the entire Twin Cites, creating singular opportunities, both for artists and for people to engage in art.”
The center’s multiple role as arts venue, outreach program and impetus for community improvement comes as no accident. In 1977, after decades as a stately landmark, the building was purchased by a notorious porn operator who quickly gutted the well-preserved interior and erected a false metal facade; creating the city’s first porn “multi-plex” and stigmatizing a neighborhood in the process.
While the fate of a neighborhood seldom rests with the condition of a single building, the loss of the community anchor— along with a crack epidemic—helped propel the neighborhood into a lingering era of blight and street-level crime. When the owner was convicted of tax fraud and sent to prison in 1990, the People of Phillips neighborhood organization gained control of the building, something the community had rallied for, as Peterson said, “from the day he opened it in 1977 to the day he went to jail.”
The theater then sat derelict for years, its windows boarded, its façade rusting and crumbling away. With the first phase of the city’s Neighborhood Revitalization Program in the mid-1990’s, People of Phillips identified the building as a lynchpin of redevelopment. Later in the decade, a task force overseeing the building established themselves as the Board of Directors of the new Franklin Cultural Center.

Following a position as curator and grant administrator at a family foundation in California —a position he described as “a wonderful crash-course in every level of museum management”—Peterson happened upon a job listing for the directorship of the fledgling art organization. The board was looking for someone with funding and programming experience; someone with the energy and vision to create an arts institution from the bottom up.
“Before I’d even interviewed, I’d been talking about the kind of programming we’re doing here now,” Peterson said. “At the foundation, it seemed that every major city except Minneapolis had a space like this; aiming to be nationally known but with major neighborhood components, as well; somewhere aiming to fill a void in local programming.”
The board originally intended that the space serve as a rental hall for the neighborhood and local arts community. Some wanted it to be a place, Peterson said, “to hang pictures of their cats on the wall.”
Realizing that the board’s vision, while noble in its own right, was “without much artistic leadership” and wouldn’t be viable in terms of extended funding, Peterson worked to develop what he called a first-class arts organization.
“I was lucky,” he added. “Most people who start a place like this have to have the money to get a facility so they can apply for grants. This was unique in that there was already a 10,000-square-foot facility here and money set aside (by the NRP) to renovate it.”
Much of the cavernous old theater still lies empty; the antique wooden arch framing the original screen still clings to the wall. Using existing grant money and an anonymous donation, Peterson said he hopes to finish much of the performance space and attain a more polished look for the brick exterior by spring.
Home to a host of social service organizations and with much of its commercial property owned by nonprofit agencies, the East Franklin Avenue corridor has struggled to attract private commercial investment despite its high traffic volume, decent housing stock and central location. But Franklin Art Works is demonstrating the domino effects possible with even small attempts at revitalization.
“Just the rehab of the exterior can have an economic impact. Private foundations in the area have really opened a door for us because we’re reclaiming a beautiful, but stigmatized building,” Peterson said. “From a porn shop to a cultural center…what’s better than that?”
And the community is taking notice.
“We’re getting neighborhood, city-wide, and national attention. We get more than a thousand people per show; 300-500 at our openings. That’s without signage on the building and just one and a half employees. People have already very nicely credited us for bringing people to the neighborhood,” Peterson said.
In recent years, the streetscape has been improved, crime is down and property values have risen sharply. Planning has also begun for the rebuilding of a prime but long-deserted intersection; and a light-rail line will soon brush its borders, bringing mandatory added investment.
“If you searched a search engine five years ago, all the articles would’ve been about crime,” Peterson noted. “Now they’re about development.”        
The impact Franklin Art Works is having is beyond economic; other art organizations are taking notice, as well.
After FAW began an off-site, hands-on art education program with local youth, the Walker Art Center brought their Mobile Classroom to the gallery. Next summer, the Walker’s art-on-wheels program will travel around Phillips and other inner-city neighborhoods; with many schools terminating arts programs, such outreach efforts often are the only organized exposure to art for under-privileged youth.
“They’re basically taking a page out of what we’ve learned,” said Peterson. “That the way to engage kids in this neighborhood in art is to go to where they are, rather than trying to get them to come to you.”
Peterson hopes to add programming annually, with the focus remaining on inclusiveness of gender, culture, medium and experience—a fitting set of parameters for a neighborhood with a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic personality.
Witness their first two seasons: Wing Young Huie’s photographic account of the life of a local Native American teen; Shannon Kennedy’s industrially visceral sound and video installation; Paul Shambroom’s stark and orderly series of photographs depicting machinations of local-level political power; and Native American artist Oscar Arredondo’s potent collection of stereotypical “re-creations” of the Cleveland Indians mascot, to name just a few.   
This winter Franklin Art Works will premiere a play by Native American Phillips resident Marc Anthony Rolo. And a summer video installation by a local artist will use local actors to address the issue of profiling.
“We also do art for arts sake,” said Peterson, citing the recent installation of an eleven-thousand-pound steel sculpture by Rollin Marquette.
“We create singular opportunities for artists. Where else would this artist get a chance to show one of these sculptures in town? Who else has 17 foot ceilings and can take up the entire gallery with one piece?”
In the spring—returning the theater to its original purpose— the Weisman Museum will bring a series of silent films to the cultural center. In keeping with its mission of being inclusive and neighborhood-friendly, Peterson says that if the Weisman chooses to charge admission, he’ll seek out grants to defer that cost.
By displaying a keen social eye and a strong intent on remaining inclusive, eclectic and professional, Peterson believes FAW has unlimited potential to grow and affect the fabric of its community. His optimism bodes well for the old stalwart called the Franklin Theater, which for so long faded into the background of a long-depressed neighborhood.
Meanwhile, Franklin Art Works will continue to offer quality, locally-and-nationally produced, socially observant artwork. In the process, they’re proving that art is not only the province of quiet galleries and stiff museums; that it carries no geographic, economic or racial boundaries. Art is culture, but on East Franklin Avenue it’s also an agent for community change, providing hope for a neighborhood and an entire non-profit arts scene.
“I want this organization to thrive and flourish,” said Peterson. “We want to offer as many opportunities for as many forms of the arts as we can, to be an arts center in the fullest sense. We don’t just want to be a gallery. You can’t limit yourself.”