[dropcap size=big]A[/dropcap] gallery owner in the Boyle Heights community has offered the “ceremonial closing” of a space to anti-gentrification activists who have been focusing their energies on pressuring art galleries in the area to close.
MaRS gallery — or Museum as Retail Space — in Boyle Heights offered its “symbolic and actual” closure as a result of the anti-gallery efforts during an interview that aired April 18 on the Design & Architecture show on KCRW.
Gallery owner Robert Zin Stark told the show that he has invited organizers “to offer the ceremonial closing of my gallery to contextualize the relevance of your cultural enaction.”
Boyle Heights has become ground-zero in community responses to the displacing effects of gentrification in Los Angeles. In the neighborhood known for its historic youth-led protest movements, a public and media battle has pitched young activists with a hardline stance calling explicitly for the removal of art galleries from the neighborhood.