How can we imagine an abundant future for St. Louis?
On the morning I relocated from Chicago to St. Louis for my new job as the Gallery Director of The Luminary, I got my first COVID-19 vaccine shot. I received my vaccine at the United Center bright and early, then hopped into the jam-packed U-Haul immediately after and hit I-55. Let us skip over the chaotic decision-making that scheduled two of the most stressful events one could experience back-to-back. Instead, I begin with my first day in St. Louis to situate my entry as a new resident within a pivotal moment of the pandemic—the shift from total restrictions to hope that a new normal was on the horizon.
When I arrived in St. Louis, restaurants did not have indoor dining, music hall doors remained shuttered, and social distancing was still a familiar phrase. My first few months in St. Louis focused on bringing in-person programming back to The Luminary, an arts space focused on artistic research and art that engages the pressing issues of the present. Eighteen months later, looking back with the benefit of hindsight, I believe I focused on the wrong things. As I drafted programming proposals and budgets, I asked myself, “How does the arts community know about events?” “Which artists should I request studio visits with for future exhibitions?” “What are a few key community programs that The Luminary should establish partnerships with?”
These questions, and others, are important, and maybe even more fitting in a different city. But within the context of a St. Louis arts ecosystem trying to sustain itself in a pandemic, I realized the questions came from what I thought an arts community should be. They were not responsive to lived experience. While I scratched my head trying to find these places and people—the leading community organizations and the exhibiting artists—I realized I could not find them because they did not exist. At least, not in the way I expected—-that is, at 100% capacity and ready to spring back into pre-pandemic flows. Just because restrictions began to lift and social spaces reopened did not mean resources were ready to support the arts.
Instead, I found that many organizations, structures, and flows needed to be rebuilt. Now it’s over two years since the beginning of the pandemic, and St. Louis still needs new ways of sharing information about happenings, connecting artists who moved back during the pandemic, and networking with other organizations, to share resources so both entities can not only survive but thrive.
My role at The Luminary was initially focused on organizing programming such as exhibitions, residencies, and gatherings. However, when I tried to apply the processes I learned in Chicago—sending our press releases to local and national contacts, adding our programs to event calendars, and hosting small engagements to meet community members—I found them ineffective. There is very little arts writing coverage in St. Louis. There are over a dozen event calendars because there is no dedicated space to the arts, and to be honest, collaboration and community in St. Louis is not often experienced. Many are so focused on securing their own resources that they do not have time and energy to connect and share space. Through this initial work (this ongoing and forever work), new questions arose for me. The work of rebuilding is an odd mix of tending to what already exists and starting anew. Do you pull up the foundation or build atop?
Now, as I consider how best to position The Luminary to attend to the local community as we rebuild, I ask myself: Who are the artists and creatives in St. Louis? Where do they live? How do they define their artistic practice? What resources do they need to not only survive but thrive?
When I consider other cities, I can create a picture of the signature artist and its community. I can describe the competitive nature of a New York arts scene, the use of the word “content” by a Los Angeles artist, and the collaborative nature of a Detroit arts collective. However, when I seek to describe St. Louis, the words elude me. I believe why I have an idea of other arts ecosystems and initially felt clueless about St. Louis is that when Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, New Orleans-based artists leave their cities, for a residency or an exhibition outside of their home, they connect with others in new cities. During studio visits or while chatting at an exhibition opening, and whether they mean to or not, they represent their hometown and arts community. They describe what working and living in Chicago is like, they share their favorite galleries and gathering spaces in New Orleans, and they recommend other Detroit artists to connect with. Few artists in St. Louis leave and pursue opportunities elsewhere, and if they do, they do not often represent St. Louis. I realized that until I arrived in St. Louis, I had not met many people from the region who could give me an introduction.
Whenever a friend visits, they almost always mention that they are excited to listen to Nelly while driving across the bridge that spans the Mississippi, with the Arch in the background. Nelly is the St. Louis artist that people from outside The Lou know the best, but as an arts administrator and curator here, I have my own research curiosities: What defines the spirit of the St. Louis arts community?
As someone who has resided in St. Louis for a short time, I look to those born, raised, and deeply connected to STL to map places and resources of the region, visualize the feeling of South City, and record the artists of North City. Artists, creatives, and community advocates who love and care for St. Louis—such as designers Alyssa Knowling and Marcus Stabenow as they build a visual language for a new St. Louis. Or filmmaker and director Cami Thomas as she works to depict another side of St. Louis, one seperate from a narrative of trauma, and to capture the feeling of living in this city. I look to poet and writer Jacqui Germain as she mixes poetry, first-person account, and journalism to document the effects of the 2014 Ferguson uprising on the St. Louis's community. They, along with many others, work to document St. Louis' past, image its present, and design its future.
The Luminary's fifteen years experienced a few chapters, and as we prepare for the next one, our small team is amidst a difficult transition. The challenges of running an organization through burnout, a rough funding landscape, and ongoing societal crises are enough to contend with. However, I find the biggest challenges in defining the next chapter are existential: "What is The Luminary? What are the possibilities of an institution? What are its limitations?" The opportunity to rebuild an institution, review existing programs and rebuild new ones, and redirect our resources is a daunting endeavor.
But if the question of how to rebuild an institution feels immense, expanding that mission to the needs of a city feels even near impossible. Many of the City of St. Louis' residents need resources for basic needs, so funding for the contemporary arts feels like a luxury item. Every city in the US needs more arts funding and advocates, but in St. Louis, the landscape feels even more scarce. The few funding entities in the region are strained themselves, and St. Louis’s old money focuses their philanthropic interests elsewhere—on youth education, community repair, small businesses, and the social services gap left by city and federal governments, made even bigger due to the strain brought on by the pandemic. The arts are not a common priority, and so they are seen as a luxury. To my knowledge, there are only three opportunities for artists to receive individual grants in STL: Regional Arts Commission, The Luminary, and The Contemporary Art Museum, via their Great Rivers Biennial. Strategic plans to raise funds to build more studios dwindle each time. Art spaces cannot sustain their overhead due to lack of local support. As a result, many St. Louis artists feel that they do not have the resources they need to continue their practice. Despite the number of vacant buildings, there are few available studios, as well as limited grants for individual artists, little to no exhibition and performance spaces to show work, and a scarcity mindset that promotes animosity between artists.
However, among all of these concerns, the one I find most pressing is what I understand as a crisis of creativity. Artists feel the stress of no time and few resources simultaneously to the pressure to create professional, crisp, final products that validate their practice. This last concern is diffuse, difficult to approach, and rarely discussed when determining priorities. For those reasons, this crisis of creativity—to improvise, spontaneously make, and be okay with risk at the expense of failure—is my primary concern. My latest question, then, is “How can The Luminary promote experimentation and risk, coalition and collaboration, in an ecosystem that is rebuilding and resources are scarce?”
There is a long way to go to rebuild St. Louis’s arts community, to consider “not one perfect path forward, but an abundance of futures, of ways to manage resources together, to be brilliant together.” The work will require a coalition and a community effort to prioritize needs, respond with care, and make progress from a variety of experiences and skill sets. Then, we’ll ask “How can we imagine an abundant future for St. Louis? What does it look like?”
