Displaced by gentrification, iconic Highland Park art gallery finds a new home

Since 2000, Avenue 50 Studio has been an essential cultural center for the Northeast Los Angeles community. And for almost as long, executive director and artistic director Kathy Gallegos has worked hard to keep Avenue 50 Studio operating in its space in Highland Park. 

For years, the property owner had fixated on evicting Gallegos and building a condominium complex in the space, gentrification at its worst. Gallegos and Avenue 50's board of directors were able to stave off his efforts, but by the end of 2024, the writing was on the wall in the form of a “Notice to Vacate,” issued by the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department.

An invaluable leader of Northeast Los Angeles’s cultural and art scene, hosting countless exhibitions, workshops, fundraisers, poetry readings, tenant’s rights meetings and more, the cultural center has finally found a new home: a storefront located in a neighborhood where Highland Park borders Cypress Park, located at 3714 N. Figueroa Street, L.A. 90065. Acknowledging its new location, the gallery will now be known as Avenue 50 Studio on Fig.

And Gallegos couldn’t be happier. “I’m relieved and excited,” she said as she led me on a tour of the new location. “It’s a smaller space, so we might not have as many exhibitions as in our old place and won’t be able to host as many people. But it’s ours, and I can’t wait to mop the floor, paint the walls and open the doors to the community.”

The first exhibition, “Changes/Cambios,” is scheduled, with the opening reception taking place on Saturday, March 8, from 3 to 6 p.m. “There are three major changes taking place right now in our world,” Gallegos explains. “First, we’re losing our communities due to gentrification. The second is the devastating wildfires. And the third is the Trump administration attacking our communities, using Latinos as scapegoats.”

The exhibition will feature an eclectic selection of work from local artists, some who have exhibited at Avenue 50 in years past, including Angela María Ortiz, Heriberto Luna, Man One, Rebecca Nabarrete, Louis Jacinto and Oscar Castillo. It  runs through April 5.

The move is not happening without its challenges. “We were in our previous home for 25 years, so we accumulated a lot of stuff, so not all of it is going to fit here,” said Gallegos. More concerning is the potential loss of funding, partly due to the Trump administration’s assault on the arts. 

But for now, Gallegos is ecstatic, savoring small victories, like the installation of Avenue 50’s phone lines and Internet services. Before I arrived, she had emailed her board, asking them to give her a call, and throughout our conversation, the phone kept ringing with her enthusiastic board checking in.

Avenue 50 Studio’s unlikely founding

In late 1990s, Kathy Gallegos, a Cuban-Puerto Rican-American and an exhibiting fine arts photographer, needed a place to shoot, process and print her photographs for an exhibition taking place at Self-Help Graphics. This led her to the storefront located at 131 N. Avenue 50 Studio, just west of Figueroa Boulevard.

“I needed a space that was convenient to get to and that had parking,” she recalls. “And I would say ‘I'm going to the Avenue 50 studio’ because that's where it’s located. And the name stuck.”

At the same time, Chicano artists had difficulty getting into mainstream L.A. galleries. “We had galleries that came and went, but nothing seemed to stick,” says Gallegos. “Some of our most well-known artists were showing in community centers, in alternative spaces and libraries, in college galleries, but they couldn't get into an established gallery.”

After hearing of those concerns, she decided to open the spacious front room and convert it into a gallery. “I invited people to come in and rent the space, and they would have their own show,” she remembers.

Becoming official, fighting eviction 

As more artists showed at the gallery, Chicana artist Margaret Garcia gave her advice. “She said to me, ’You've got to get a business license,” Gallegos remembers. “She took me by the hand to the business center for the city of L.A., where we established a business account. It was with the help of the art community that made Avenue 50 what it is.” 

As an ‘official’ gallery, Avenue 50 began exhibiting in earnest. “We showed Margaret and Frank Romero, We had the East Los Streetscapers, together and separately. We showed José Ramirez and Ramón Ramirez. We had group shows as well,” says Gallegos. “And then we started to expand into the adjacent building and grew.” 

As it transitioned to a nonprofit organization in 2003, Gallegos began her quest to purchase the space. According to Gallegos, “Every time I'd pay the rent I’d say to the landlord, ‘I want to buy the building,’ and he’d say, ‘This property is not for you.’ But that didn't stop me. Every month, I went to him and asked the same thing.”

Before she knew it, Gallegos discovered that the building had been sold to another entity. “The new landlord, who came in about 2008, wanted to develop the property and make it into condos. He went downtown and put in permits to build here,” Gallegos recalled. 

“I was told, ‘You have to go to [City of L.A. Department of Building and Safety] hearing,’ but by then I thought there was nothing I could do, so I didn’t go. Later I was told that about 100 community people showed up. They were booing him saying, ‘You can’t shut Avenue 50 down’ and he didn’t get his permit,” Gallegos explained.

According to Gallegos, the property owner came into the gallery shortly after and angrily blamed her for his not getting the permit, doubling her rent on the spot. That didn’t deter her from continuing to pursue the purchase of the building. But the pressure was also on for her to vacate.

“He would put locks on the gate, tear down fences, drop off building supplies in the back of the property, making it look like a junkyard,” she said, but with every rent payment, she would implore the owner to sell.

Meanwhile, the gallery continued to operate and thrive, hosting exhibitions and making the space available to community groups, including the Southern California Women's Caucus of Artand the Arroyo Arts Collective. Gallegos was honored for her efforts, receiving a Women's Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award and proclaimed as a local hero by public television station KCET.

The pressure to vacate comes to a crescendo

Cut to Fall 2023, when Gallegos received a call from the property owner. “He told me, ‘Don’t freak out, but I’m going to serve you some papers … you have to move out,’” she remembers. This time, she and her board immediately sprang into action. “I called the Tenants Union and later to Public Counsel, which provides pro-bono law for families, students, non-profits and small businesses,” said Gallegos.

The lawyers at Public Counsel suggested she approach the landlord to give Avenue 50 time to find a place to move, asking for six months. “One of my board members said, ‘Let’s go for broke, let’s ask for a year and let him say ‘no. ’ We were given a year,” she says.

“So we signed the agreement and started looking for property to buy,” says Gallegos. ”We must have looked into 10, 20 different places to buy, places that just had walls and no ceiling and no interior, no roof, no functioning plumbing, places that've been stripped of the copper wiring.”

So when August 2024 came around, members of the board told her, “’Kathy call him and see if he's willing to give us a little more time. He hasn't gotten his permits. He hasn't gotten his financing, so there is really no rush to get out.’”

In September, Gallegos called him. “He said to me ’No problem, Kathy. We’ll work with you. Don’t involve lawyers, talk to me. I'll work with you if you need time.’ I said, okay, thank you. And we're looking, we're looking for places,” says Gallegos. 

In mid-November, when she called again, he blurted out that they would have to move in two weeks, insisting that she and her board were not making good on finding a place to relocate  “And he says to me, ‘I just talked about a couple of weeks, that's it,’” she recalls bitterly. 

“And so we had to regroup and really work hard now. We had to put buying a property on the back burner and looking for a lease space on the front burner,” says Gallegos. “

With hopes for staying longer dashed, the board doubled their efforts in finding a place to lease, while also preparing to move out of the present location. “It’s been hard on the community. And I've had people come in here crying, people who didn’t want us to go,” says Gallegos, sadly.

A community call went out last December, asking for volunteers to assist in packing up artwork, archives and equipment. The search was also on, not only for a new gallery space, but for storage space.

And her supporters responded. “You know, our community doesn't have a lot of resources, but it has been very good. They've been sending us money, they've been volunteering for things and they're bringing boxes and saying, ‘any way I can help Kathy, just let us know.’”

Fortuitously, days before they would have to move, a board member driving on Figueroa Street saw a “For Lease” sign on a prospective building. And after some negotiation, Avenue 50 Studios finally found a new home.

What’s next for Avenue 50

In the words of Gallegos, Avenue 50’s mission will continue in the new location. “This is a place that’s not just for the visual artist, it's for the poets, it's a community center where people meet,” she proudly states. 

“And now, we have to work with our younger people, to help develop a new generation of artists. So that's the challenge I'm facing,” she says.

But for now and into the near future, Gallegos will continue to direct the gallery, bringing people together in the pursuit of art, culture and community, secure in a new location and wary, but aware, of the damages brought on by gentrification.

Avenue 50 Studios on Fig

3714 N. Figueroa Street, L.A. 90065

(323) 352 3010

avenue50studio@gmail.com