‘The hand we were dealt’

The Lansing Art Gallery dodged a dozen near-death experiences in its 60-year history, but it was still a shock when the real thing struck.

Citing insurmountable financial difficulties, Board Chair Rachel Beatty announced Saturday (March 22) that the gallery will close at the end of April.

Since its founding in 1965 as the first permanent art gallery in Lansing, the plucky, resilient gallery has brightened up one makeshift location after another, showcasing the work of thousands of local artists and developing a robust network of educational programs.

Riding out cyclical recessions and rolling with the ups and downs of Lansing’s struggling downtown, the nonprofit not only stood its ground but expanded into the streets and trails with innovative and high-quality public art initiatives.

But a post-COVID cluster of challenges confronted the gallery with the most formidable landscape yet.

Warning bells began flashing for Beatty shortly after she became board chair in July 2024.

The gallery moved to its current location in the Knapp’s Centre in 2021, which was a rough time for downtown Lansing amid the pandemic.

Before a recent round of staff layoffs, the gallery’s operating expenses amounted to $20,000 a month, according to Beatty. At the same time, grant funds were drying up, donors were getting tapped out, and foot traffic in the area was ebbing to disastrous lows.

“We found out we were in a financial crisis,” Beatty said. “We wanted to make it to our 60th anniversary this year, so we immediately started to pivot.”

The gallery suspended operations in September to sort out the situation. Seven staff members were laid off, executive director Michelle Carlson resigned, and a fundraiser brought in $12,000. (The fundraiser, held in conjunction with Deadtime Stories bookstore, was drolly titled “Not Dead Yet!”) Some 20 volunteers, many of them students, pitched in to keep the gallery going.

A focus group of 30 community members generated ideas for programs and exhibits that would attract broader audiences and generate more traffic.

“It was really helpful, and I started trying to find ways to fund new programs,” Beatty said. “But it was hard to secure long-term funding with our short-term uncertainties.”

Even the simple suggestion to offer a donor naming rights to the Mezzanine Gallery presumed that the gallery had a future.

“We had all these options and a marketing plan to move forward, but we were having a hard time just paying our rent,” Beatty said. “It’s hard to ask donors, ‘Hey, help us stay open another month.’ Asking the public to donate with so much uncertainty was kind of immoral.”

Artists who show work in multiple Midwest galleries, including the Lansing Art Gallery, told Beatty that people are tightening their purse strings everywhere, concentrating on necessities and buying less art.

The decision to close was extra frustrating for Beatty given the big changes coming to downtown in the next few years.

“We were really looking forward to the Macotta Club opening last year,” Beatty said.

The Macotta Club, an incubator kitchen with six restaurant options and 16 “food concepts,” has been due to open next door to the gallery in the Knapp’s Centre, but the opening has been repeatedly delayed.

Hundreds of new housing units, a new performing arts center and a new City Hall are all scheduled to go up in the next few years.

“If I had a year or two to improve our programs, solidify them and get some funding, it would have been perfect, but it wasn’t feasible in short the time we had,” Beatty said.

She said the gallery’s closing isn’t a harbinger of doom, only an unfortunate confluence of temporary woes.

“This doesn’t reflect the Lansing arts community,” she said. “We’re strong, we’re vibrant. There’s so much support, and so many artists love this community. The future of the arts landscape is going to be on the rise in the next couple of years.”

If that’s so, and if downtown is on the verge of a significant transformation, might the Lansing Art Gallery be merely dormant and not dead?

Beatty stressed that the board voted to dissolve the gallery and was reluctant to discuss any alternate futures.

But in movies and comic books, the death of a main character is seldom final, and the Lansing Art Gallery has been a protagonist in Greater Lansing’s cultural scene for 60 years.

Beatty said the gallery’s non-physical existence as a nonprofit organization, along with its financial accounts, will remain on the books with the state of Michigan “for a few years.” A fresh set of players, or a fresh set of plans, could, in theory, resurrect the gallery in some new form.

“If funding and support arises during that time, things could change,” she said.

To emphasize the continuity of the gallery’s mission, representatives from other Lansing-area art organizations, such as REACH Studio Art Center and the Arts Council of Greater Lansing, will be present at the April 3 closing reception to share information on where to get involved and move the arts forward.

“Even though we’re leaving, there’s still a permanent arts community,” Beatty said.

The reception will also present the rare chance to buy pieces from the gallery’s permanent collection. The gallery’s last solo exhibition, “Dog Days,” by artist Yve Holtzclaw, will be up in the gallery until April 3.

After April 3, the gallery will conduct a liquidation sale of fixtures and other items.

Despite Beatty’s optimism for the future of Lansing’s arts community, the gallery’s closing still hurts. When she was in high school, she submitted artwork to the gallery’s Ingham Student Art Exhibit.

“It really helped me through a dark time in my life after several losses,” she said. When she joined the gallery’s board years later, she was eager to give back to an institution that had helped her through a rocky patch.

“Going through this has been really emotional because I wanted to make the gallery succeed,” she said. “I put a lot of effort into it, but the hand we were dealt ...” she ended the sentence with a sigh.