Color meets the eye before you even walk into the Kennedy Gallery: Dark sky blue paint covers the walls of the three-story 1890’s Victorian. Inside, the gallery houses works of fine art ranging from recycled metal sculptures to baskets and paintings.
“I’ll miss this space here,” owner and curator Michael Misha Kennedy said of the gallery’s second-floor turret, looking fondly at the area. “Every year at the holidays, we would decorate it … with a holiday tree, and so the turret will be missed.”
Nestled along the curve of the wall now are handheld murals — artists from the WX Mural Museum have painted vases with bright scenes and community figures like Cesar Chavez.
The second-floor turret's windows are also decorated with lights.Janelle Salanga/CapRadio
They’re a reflection of the type of art and artists Kennedy says he’s made his mission to champion and curate as both an art agent and the owner of the Lavender Heights gallery: Those “that I thought were not being represented here in Sacramento, especially minority artists,” he said.
“I just felt very strongly that we all deserve to have an equal platform,” Kennedy said. “And that we should be able to have a place where our art is valued the same as anywhere else, and that the equity needs to be there.”
PBS has called Kennedy Gallery the “Jewel of Midtown,” and the 17-year-old Lavender Heights gallery has featured hundreds of artists from marginalized communities — particularly Sacramento’s LGBTQ+ community.
Its closure isn’t just a loss for local artists, but for Sacramento at large. The gallery has opened its doors to high school fundraisers, wedding parties, budding chefs, musicians and more. And it’s given back by donating art or ticket profits from events to local nonprofits and charities, including the Sacramento County Fair, the Sacramento Native American Health Center and numerous LGBTQ+ groups.
“There is a huge opportunity to educate and learn about someone else's community through the arts,” Kennedy added. “That's why these spaces are so valuable.”
They said that the decision to close the gallery comes after “kicking the can down the street for three years” due to the impact of reduced foot traffic, sales after the initial pandemic lockdowns and lack of public support and funding for the arts. “I was hoping we could ride it out through COVID, but it just was so hard.”
From art agent to gallery owner
Before Kennedy opened the Lavender Heights gallery, the artist — who moved to Sacramento from Portland — worked as an art agent, managing over 100 exhibits in restaurants, shops and other stores in the area, including now-defunct Butch N Nellie’s coffee shop.
Kennedy credits Abundio Montez of Phoenix Framing and Gallery and Joan “Joanie” Ferry, their “art mother,” as taking them under their wing during those early years in the city.
“I learned really quickly that [managing over 100 spaces] was kind of insane,” they said, laughing. “Over time, I started narrowing that down.”
In 2006 — after a metal tooth filling landed him in a coma that took months to recover from — Kennedy had his first opportunity to open a brick-and-mortar collaborative space in the art complex located on 21st and K Streets, picking a spot all the way in the back.
“I could just see the traffic ending up and pulling up at the end of the hallway, and I said, ‘That’s where the party’s gonna be.’”
Kennedy was proven right, and his brick-and-mortar space in the complex soon doubled when the space next to him, then occupied by a hypnotherapist, was vacated.
“With all of the banging on the walls and installing art, she didn’t last very long in the space, and I don’t blame her,” he said. “Then I started watching other people’s spaces.”
A year later, Faces nightclub owner Terry Sidie approached Kennedy about a different space, one on 20th and K Streets next to Head Hunters dance club (now Mango’s Sacramento). With the help of fellow artists in the complex he was then at, Kennedy was able to get the entire space — jumping from 1,000 square feet to 3,000.
“My mother thought I was crazy. I thought I might have been a little crazy, too.”
But thousands of people walked through the doors on the gallery’s first Second Saturday, an attendance number that was regularly met for the five years the gallery occupied the space.
“My aunt showed up and I said, ‘I’m sorry, Auntie, but you’re gonna have to play bartender today,’ so I stuck her behind the bar and I was absolutely panicking, [thinking] ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t handle this many people,’” he recalled of that first day open.
Chief among the main exhibits the Kennedy Gallery has showcased over the years is the Twenty20 show, an inheritance from Ferry, who juried the Sacramento art galleries when she decided to retire and picked the Kennedy to host it.
The exhibit is on display at the Kennedy now, and the subject matter, conveyed on 25 8-by-8 panels, is broad. There’s brightly colored animal portraits, renditions of Sacramento landscapes, interpretations of balloons and birds jumping out of panels.
Selected submissions from the Twenty20 show decorate the Kennedy Gallery's walls on June 21, 2023.Janelle Salanga/CapRadio
“That part is the bittersweet part, I'm going to miss not hosting that show,” Kennedy said. “It's been my favorite one every year.”
They added that they’ll likely talk with Ferry before deciding what the future of Twenty20 is — whether it’ll go to another gallery, take a sabbatical or do something else.
“This was her baby and she started it and we've been stewards for it for 14 years. So I would love to see one of Sacramento's favorite exhibits to keep going.”
Reflections on the gallery’s close and the future of Sacramento art
Kennedy started the gallery to provide a space for underrepresented fine artists, whether they are self-taught or professionally-trained, and said that need will remain after its close.
The stairway to the gallery's third floor is denoted by a primary-color More Art sign.Janelle Salanga/CapRadioWhile the city did launch its inaugural community murals project from 2021-22, with 10 teams of artists painting walls in the eight Sacramento-area districts in partnership with neighborhood community stakeholders, Kennedy says he’d like to see more support for galleries and fine artists — not just muralists.
“We don't want to become an art desert in Sacramento, but it doesn't seem like there's a lot of attention being placed into preserving the galleries,” Kennedy said.
Gallery space can be crucial for artists, with galleries working collaboratively with artists to provide them emotional, financial and logistical support.
Gallerist and curator Faith J. McKinnie, whose self-named gallery showcases the work of artists of color, told Comstock’s in 2021: “I think we don’t have enough galleries in Sacramento, and galleries are part of the infrastructure that keeps artists here. They sustain artists and thinkers.”
That sustenance can happen through inspiration for art practice, which Kennedy said he saw between emerging artists and more established ones at the gallery, across mediums and styles. He added that his gallery’s artists — some of whom have showcased their work there for the entire 17 years, like acrylic painter Pat Orner — are like a family.
“Sacramento is kind of a tough nut to crack in the beginning, but when you're one of them, they — we always kind of take care of each other,” they said. “And the artists here had that spirit too.”
The Kennedy Gallery artists have also used the gallery as a workspace, not just a display, as evidenced by this set-up. Kennedy says artists have also used the building's porch as a place to work.Janelle Salanga/CapRadioAnd Kennedy said there needs to be much more transparency, communication and funding for public arts. They sat on the Sacramento Office of Arts and Culture’s Race and Cultural Equity Task Force as a representative of the LGBTQ+ and Native communities in Sacramento, and said one goal they had for the verbiage for the city’s diversity statement was “strong intentions and language for creating equity for all of these communities.”
He recalled a mural project on one of the Lavender Heights’ gay bars, one that didn’t feature LGBTQ+ artists or stories — “the images weren’t the community, the story wasn’t us,” he said.
“I think that's a really bad failure there — coming into someone else's community, and not having conversations, first of all, and then not finding people within their own community to talk about their story, history and their culture,” Kennedy said. “This is one of the reasons why I created the gallery and the platform in the first place. I didn't see myself in these venues. I didn't see myself getting public art commissions. And neither were other people in my own community.”
That’s also a problem Black artists in Sacramento have highlighted, resulting in the birth of resources like the Black Arts Foundry, created by McKinnie to help provide more equity in arts funding.
“If a company is looking for a Black artist in Sacramento, they’re only going to choose one of us, then we all feel like we’re being excluded," Brandon Gastinell, a digital visual artist, told ABC10 in 2020. "This isn’t just a Sacramento issue. It’s an art world issue."
“Equity looks like you’re spending millions of dollars in the Asian community to represent their story and culture,” Kennedy said. “They were here to build the city. So where's their story? Where's the story of the first people of Sacramento? Where's the investment in the art?”
Kennedy said they want to see more investment in fine artists from marginalized backgrounds and more communication to those artists about what opportunities exist.
“They’re the ones that are telling the story of you and Sacramento, and it’s what brings it to life, the energy and the diversity,” he said. “They’re not being seen at county fairs or the state fair, because people don’t know how to get into them. People don’t know how to access the funds to do a public art process. Or if they do apply for it, [they hear] ‘You don’t have any experience, so we’re passing you over.’”
They added that the “same group of people getting all the projects and all the goodies, and all of these minority communities and minority artists are not getting a fair shake at representation and projects.”
Ultimately, Kennedy hopes his work in maintaining the gallery and sharing its artists’ work has had an impact on Sacramento.
“I hope, you know, that years down the road, that people will still fondly remember, you know, the footprint that we created in the art scene,” they said.
Kennedy poses in front of the gallery on June 21, 2023. They called the closure "bittersweet."Janelle Salanga/CapRadioThe gallery, located at 1938 L Street, has an “everything must go” closing sale from Thursday to Sunday between noon and 6 p.m., with the lighting and display cabinets up for sale and all art half-off.
Follow us for more stories like this
CapRadio provides a trusted source of news because of you. As a nonprofit organization, donations from people like you sustain the journalism that allows us to discover stories that are important to our audience. If you believe in what we do and support our mission, please donate today.
Donate Today
