Minnesota Street Project announces new nonprofit Minnesota Street Foundation
by Tony Bravo
The Minnesota Street Project is branching out.
Deborah and Andy Rappaport, the entrepreneur founders of the art center and gallery hub in the Dogpatch, announced this month that they’ve established a new nonprofit Minnesota Street Project Foundation. It will work alongside the 3-year-old for-profit project in an effort to further “support and strengthen a sustainable, vibrant contemporary arts community in San Francisco,” according to the foundation announcement made on Oct. 8.
“Deborah and I started Minnesota Street Project with a strong commitment to using our spaces and programming as a means to build bridges between the Bay Area’s visual arts community and the community as a whole,” says Andy Rappaport. “We’ve learned a lot from events that have happened organically in our spaces since we’ve opened — events that have combined art, technology, several of the region’s cultural diasporas, and local and international businesses and nonprofits — and we’re now excited to have a mechanism through which we make these kinds of encounters more purposeful and regular.”
The foundation’s plans so far include creating regular educational and cultural programming in connection with the project’s ongoing First Saturday event every month with extended gallery hours. The foundation hopes to have these services running by the end of the year, according to the Rappaports. In the process of establishing the new organization, Ivana Colendich was recently hired as the foundation’s first development director.
The Rappaports have also underwritten the first year of operations for the foundation as well as some of the initial programming. Specific programs are yet to be announced.
“We are now able to say yes when people and organizations come to us asking, ‘Can you help us do this?’” says Deborah Rappaport. “The foundation is a facilitator for individuals and individual organizations, and we also are able to connect organizations to realize a program of interest to more than one entity. We are eager to see what sort of ideas come in and the ways we can use our infrastructure to realize them.”
Minnesota Street Project opened in 2016 in a converted warehouse at 1275 Minnesota St., as home to 10 galleries, including Anglim Gilbert Gallery, Casemore Kirkeby, Rena Bransten Gallery and the nonprofit SFArtsEd. Additional gallery space in the building is available for short-term rental.
The two-story, ultramodern space designed by Jensen architects, with its sweeping atrium, is also frequently rented out for special events and hosts art happenings like the annual San Francisco Art Book Fair in July. The project also operates an art service and storage business and houses the restaurant Besharam.
In the three years since its opening, Minnesota Street Project has established itself as a key destination in San Francisco’s art scene and a major player in events like the city’s unofficial art fair week in January.
The Minnesota Street Project’s new dual for-profit/foundation model is also employed at Ken Fulk’s year-old St. Joseph’s Arts Society, which has a for-profit side that oversees its retail space and gallery rentals and runs programming, while also maintaining an arts-focused nonprofit arm.