Lack of city funding threatens to close the Stay Gallery, so on November 1st, they called for the community’s support in getting the issue addressed by the city of Downey.

The Stay Gallery, founded in 2012 by Gabriel Enamorado and Valentin Flores, is a non-profit art gallery in Downtown Downey with the goal of providing the local artists, families, and youths of Southeast Los Angeles access to the arts. Created in collaboration with the city of Downey, the Stay Gallery has held over a hundred exhibitions and actively holds art classes for kids and families. 

The city of Downey approached Enamorado and Flores in 2010 after the success of their “Ambivalence” exhibition, a photography exhibit of Enamorado and Flores’ combined works, which was held in the Downey Civic Theatre before the gallery space existed. It was through this partnership with the city that the Stay Gallery was given the space and a location to grow—a location that the city agreed to pay for. The sudden lack of renewal in their agreement is what has left Stay Gallery asking the community for help.

Previously, Stay Arts and the City of Downey were in an agreement: the city of Downey will compensate Stay Arts from the Art In Public Places fund for Stay Gallery’s lease, and in return, Stay Arts will maintain a public art facility and provide the community public access to local art, art classes, and events.

“[The agreement is] the way you’d hire someone for their services. The city essentially hired us for our services and we were compensated through the direct payment of our lease,” current programs director Juliana Canty explained. 

The money the city used to pay Stay Gallery’s lease didn’t come from anywhere— in fact, it didn’t even come from its residents. The gallery’s lease was previously paid through the Art in Public Places Ordinance, a piece of city legislation created in 2005 that requires commercial developers to either construct a publically accessible piece of art on their property or pay 1% of their total development costs to the city. The money paid to the city is then put into the Art in Public Places Ordinance fund, a fund which can only be used to either construct public art (such as murals or statues) or be used to fund places that publicly display art, such as a gallery. In short, companies that construct in Downey must pay the city money which it can then only use to fund access to public art, therefore, development companies have been providing the city money to keep Stay Gallery’s lights on.

“That’s what we’re advocating to be continued,” Canty explained. “There’s money literally dedicated to paying art venues that doesn’t get paid with through tax payer money. That’s what we want back.” 

The $40,000 price tag of their lease isn’t an easy amount of money for Stay Gallery, a non-profit, to make out of nowhere. For-profit galleries have a goal of generating revenue for business. To do this, they typically take a 50% cut of sales from artists who sell work through the gallery and tend to focus exclusively on selling artwork. Stay Gallery, on the other hand, doesn’t focus on generating revenue. 

“We operate more in-line of a museum or a community space… where the [Stay Gallery] is more of a creative community space showcasing local people’s artwork and we only take 30% of sales to cover costs,” Gabriel Enamorado, the current executive director, explained. Their main method of generating revenue is applying for county, state, and private grants, receiving donations, creating merchandise, and participating in sponsor packets to fund their programs and exhibitions. This means they only “make money” when they receive grant payments or donations, or when somebody purchases a good, making it difficult to suddenly come up with $40,000.

The key word here is suddenly. According to Enamorado and Canty, there was a lack of communication between the city and the gallery to inform them ahead of time that their agreement was not being renewed: “There was no off-boarding plans or a respectful means of letting us know [the payment of the lease] wasn’t going to continue,” Canty said. “We feel left in the dark, continuously asking what’s going on and why aren’t they continuing [the agreement]. It feels like we were evaded and are being left out in the cold.”

Enamorado and Canty explained they’ve stayed open since the end of their agreement in May by redirecting their current funds to their lease. That means using donations and grant money intended for exhibitions and programs to keep their lights on. 

“We won a grant from the LA Creative Recovery Grant for $22,000 dollars that was intended for programming and staffing costs, but it was redirected towards the lease payments,” Enamorado said. “We’ve had to reallocate funds to the lease payments, and the slow down of programs is how we’ve held onto this space for so long.” 

The programs Enamorado mentioned are the various exhibits Stay Gallery puts together and the free after-school art classes they teach in partnership with the Downey Foundation for Educational Opportunities. The “staffing costs” are for the 8 art teachers from this after-school program. Not only are these exhibits and programs important to Stay Gallery’s mission, they’re also important to the community as a whole.

Stay Gallery is the only visual art space and gallery in the City of Downey providing arts and cultural programming for residents. It is also one of the few art spaces operating in Southeast Los Angeles, a region historically underserved in the arts.

“Because we’re fulfilling a need, there’s not necessarily a lot of support or resources for art in this area,” Canty said. “The city has very differing positions on its role in funding the arts. It’s an uphill battle in Downey and Southeast Los Angeles, but that’s why we’re here.” 

That also means the community Stay Gallery serves is “historically disadvantaged,” meaning because of a lack of galleries, local artists and families interested in the arts have had to leave the area in order to pursue it. Additionally, since Southeast Los Angeles is an especially ethnically diverse community, the artists themselves tend to be underrepresented in the world of fine arts. By being dedicated to serving the local community of Downey and its surrounding cities, many of the artists featured in Stay Gallery are new, ethnically diverse artists who have never had the opportunity to display their work before— including the artists of Downey High School.

Downey High School and the Stay Gallery have yearly student exhibitions at the end of the school year, along with exhibitions of artwork from other Downey Unified School District schools. For many of these artists, their work has never been on public display. Michelle Napoli, one of Downey High School’s photography teachers, commented on the importance of Stay Gallery’s student exhibitions, saying, “[Student exhibitions were] important to me because it always made these students feel maybe like an artist for the first time. We could’ve maybe done this exhibit at school, but it’s not the same as a real gallery. It bridges that gap into becoming a real artist.” 

Without the Stay Gallery, Downey High School’s visual arts students would not have the opportunity to see their work recognized and feel like artists. The gallery gives students the opportunity to feel more confident in themselves and their abilities.

Through the Stay Gallery, students also get to see local artists of similar ethnic backgrounds as the students themselves. Downey High School art and photography students take field trips to see new exhibits at the Stay Gallery. “The artist and curator [of the exhibits] have always been arranged to be there while we go,” Napoli said. “Now the students are seeing different faces that look like them or are younger than expected. It’s a lot more inclusive. I’ve found a lot of students expect artists in galleries to be old white men and think, ‘maybe you don’t usually see someone who looks like me in this space.’” Since Stay Gallery has a focus on displaying the work of artists from the local area, not only does it help local artists feel like artists, it also helps artists feel recognized.

Lauren Temple, the curator of the MotherHOOD exhibit that took place at Stay Gallery in May of 2023, also expressed an appreciation for Stay Gallery’s mission, saying “Stay’s mission is dedicated to folks in Southeast LA which is the most important part of my targeted demographic. I wanted to make sure we include this demographic wherever I went, but with Stay, it was already embedded in their mission. I didn’t have to explain why I wanted this, because they already knew.” 

Through the Stay Gallery’s after-school art programs, they also provide free classes in a subject that’s had a historical lack of funding and support. In this way, young kids get to learn skills in a subject they might not have had access to otherwise. “With kids especially, we’re all born creative and born with this urge to want to make something. And so, we just feel we’re the enablers of that. We can create programs so kids can keep doing that,” Enamorado said. Not only do these students end up in Stay Gallery’s student exhibitions, receiving the benefits mentioned prior, but they also get to do it free of charge as a way of exploring their own interests and identity. Currently, there is no other program within the city of Downey that does this for free.

Continuing to pay their lease with money intended to expand their teaching programs and create their exhibitions just isn’t sustainable long term. Not only is it difficult to collect that much money through mainly grants and donations, but it’s also against the mission of Stay Gallery overall and limits the impact they value having in the community. Their mission statement is to provide local artists, families, and youth access to the arts. If the major ways they provide this access are through exhibitions and programs and they cannot use the money meant for their exhibitions and programs, how will they meet their goals? This is ultimately why Stay Gallery has asked the community for help: they cannot continue their mission without a continuation of their previous agreement with the city and believe showing the city the value Stay Gallery has to the community might secure that renewed agreement.

That’s why Gabriel Enamorado and Juliana Canty took the issue to the November 14th Downey City Council meeting. Enamorado and Canty attended to advocate for the city council to add Stay Gallery’s continued funding to a future public agenda. Doing so would allow the city council to vote publicly, on the spot, on whether or not Stay Gallery should receive funding from the Art in Public Places Ordinance once again. In support of Stay Gallery and Enamorado and Canty’s mission, 28 individuals attended and spoke on behalf of Stay, creating a diverse crowd of various ages, ethnicities, and occupations. The youngest speaker was an elementary school girl who attends Stay Gallery’s art classes and the oldest were Bob Thompson of the Downey Historical Society and Carol Kerns of the Downey Art Coalition.

In addition to the 28 speakers who attended, 29 written letters were sent to the city council, including letters from a Getty Museum Assistant Director alongside a senior manager from the LA Metro Transportation Authority and the Californians for the Arts. Enamorado also shared that 1,100 individuals had signed the Change.org petition to have Stay Gallery’s funding continued. The turnout in support for Stay Gallery was overwhelming, with Mayor Claudia Frometa doubling the time for public comment on non-agenda items from 30 minutes to 60 minutes and dropping the speaker time limit from 5 minutes to 2 minutes. When 3 speakers remained at the end of that 60 minutes, the city council voted in favor of letting the 3 remaining individuals speak anyway. 

One thing was clear: the public supported the continued funding of the Stay Gallery. Some residents who attended to speak on other issues even included support for the Stay Gallery in their comments after hearing supporters speak. However, it was difficult to discern how the council felt. While Mayor Frometa repeatedly expressed that the issue of Stay Gallery’s funding would be added to a subsequent agenda meeting, many attendees felt she missed the point of what they were trying to say.

Mayor Frometa, in the middle of the public comment time period, requested the timer be paused and made a call to action, suggesting that if all 1,100 individuals who signed the petition and the various members of the public in attendance, “forgo 10 lattes at our local Starbucks, we can, with $55, that every member that signed the petition and those that have spoken tonight” could perhaps come together with enough money to pay for Stay Gallery’s lease. She seemed to believe Stay Gallery’s lease was simply a fundraising issue, making many attendees feel she glossed over the various speakers who vouched for Enamorado’s financial and business practice and donations the Gallery already receives alongside the money set aside to be used exclusively for public art or public art venues not being put towards the lease.

“Fundraising efforts need to take place as well,” Mayor Frometa said, “There are people in this community that would be more than happy to write a check to the gallery. There are many businesses and organizations that would love to sponsor and also contribute to this space. And so, it’s not just a city collaboration.” 

A speaker who did not share their name rebutted Mayor Frometa afterward in their comment, stating, “saying that this is a fundraising effort to people who are mostly living paycheck to paycheck isn’t necessarily connecting to these people. It’s a little, with all due respect, a little ignorant, and it alienates responsibility from yourself, a person in power.” After the fact, many Stay supporters agreed with this sentiment.

Due to Mayor Frometa’s statements, while Stay Gallery was successfully added to a future agenda for public discussion, many attendees left disappointed, believing the council didn’t understand why the gallery needed funding specifically from the city. However, Enamorado did emphasize that their after-school program with DUSD would continue whether or not they had a physical location, but what would be lost is a beloved community gathering place where residents connect through art exhibitions, programs, classes, and events.

With the lease due in January, the attendees remain steadfast in their goal, and many plan to return to give additional comments in 2 weeks when Stay Gallery’s funding will be officially discussed and voted on.