5 Points Gallery

5 Points Art Gallery + Studios, one of Milwaukee’s most vital creative spaces, has been targeted by predatory development and lending practices and needs your help fighting off foreclosure due to a $260,000 balloon payment and resisting displacement in Milwaukee’s creative community.

In just seven years, 5 Points Art Gallery + Studios has become a respected mainstay in Milwaukee, WI's art scene—a home for local, national, and international artists; a hub where aesthetics meet advocacy; a site for residency programs, sustainable business development, and community transformation. Under the visionary leadership of owner, artist, and curator Fatima Laster, the gallery has earned awards like the 2024 Black Excellence Award, the 2024 Milwaukee Art Board Mildred L. Harpole Artist of the Year, the 2021 Mayor’s Design Award and the 2020 Friends of the Arts Award. Now, the space needs our collective support to pay off a $260,000 balloon payment to secure its future and continue being a home for affordable artist housing, groundbreaking exhibitions amplifying marginalized voices, and community-driven programming.

You can support 5 Points Gallery via this Mightycause site, or, send a check to Create Wisconsin (payable to), Box 1054, Madison, WI 53701-1054.  Please include a note indicating that your donation is for 5 Points Gallery.

Help save 5 Points Art Gallery + Studio!  More info at www.5ptsartgallery.com.

About:

5 Points Art Gallery + Studios is a conscious reinvestment project, embedded in the operator, Fatima Laster's, childhood North Side Milwaukee neighborhood of 5 Points. 5 Points Art Gallery + Studios has served as an art exhibition, residency and cultural community space focused on increasing representation, collection and cultivation of local, national, and international contemporary art by artists of color and other marginalized groups. The space is a hearth for exploration, collaboration, professional development, and business expansion in the visual, culinary, and varying art genres.

The 5 Points Art Gallery + Studios building is a historical structure from the 1920s that previously housed the premier, black-owned Johnson-Goolsby Funeral Home and Services. This adaptive-reuse redevelopment was revived into a mixed-use art space, consisting of a 3,000 square foot art gallery with a gift shop for professional visual art exhibitions and special events, 9 artist work studios, a shared commercial kitchen for culinary artists and caterers and 2 artist residency apartments to holistically support the professional, economic, and social-emotional well-being and development of underrepresented artists and provide a safe and affordable respite.