Art Hub (and Coffee!) Opens in Third Ward

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Photo courtesy MARN Arts

Coffee + Wine by Interval at the MARN Art + Culture Hub

MARN

Wine and coffee, art and conversation, come together at the newest venue in the Historic Third Ward. It’s called MARN ART + CULTURE HUB (191 N. Broadway) and it's actually multiple venues in one space, including an artist-run gallery, a marketplace stocked with work by local artists and a coffee and wine bar.

The new project by MARN (Milwaukee Artist Resource Network) aspires to be an incubator of local creativity. It’s a place where artists can meet and work, but the larger goal of attaching a coffee and wine bar to the Art Hub is to draw the general public. “We wanted to get the café as close to the street as possible so that people walking by every day will see it and come inside,” says Mal Montoya, MARN’s president and CEO.

The coffee and wine bar looks out through big glass windows onto Broadway, the Third Ward’s artery The century-old building boasts Cream City brick walls, exposed beam ceilings, blond wood floors and white tables and chair trimmed in black. Past the coffee and wine bar, decked out in gleaming chrome fixtures, is MARN’s bright white gallery. Along with the expected track lighting is a drop-down screen and 10-foot moveable walls enabling curators to reconfigure the space for each exhibit. Among the many innovative features is a triptych of footed screens, moving displays for motion graphics created by MARN staff.

Brick and Mortar

When MARN emerged at the start of the new century, it was known mostly as an online message board for artists. “It was living in the ethers with a virtual presence for a long time,” Montoya says. The membership-based organization briefly ran a gallery on Vliet Street and later operated from a modest office in the Third Ward’s Marshall Building. “In 2019 we received an anonymous grant that allowed us to build our operational capacity,” he continues. “We immediately felt there was an opportunity to establish a greater footprint for the local creative community.”

Working with MARN board chair Pamela Anderson, Montoya was determined to establish a center that would bring maximum exposure to the work of its 300 members. “We focused on areas where there was a natural flow of foot traffic,” he says, explaining the choice of location. With its array of locally owned cafes and shops, and proximity to the Broadway Theater Center and MIAD, the ART HUB is ideally situated.

Montoya recalls that MARN hoped to open the new center in 2020, but COVID intervened. Coffee + Wine by Interval at the MARN ART + CULTURE HUB occupy the deep storefront that was once home to Elements East, a retailer specializing in Asian furniture. The dark space was gutted and opened-up with the coffee and wine bar’s airy, spacious design suggested by photographs of a French cafe in Hanoi.

Community Involvement

The HUB is true to its name as a nexus of community involvement. At night, the HUB’s large conference room becomes the classroom for Edessa, the new black-owned fashion academy.

MARN will offer its own workshops at the HUB and continue its mentorship program, pairing developing artists with established local figures to learn the business and other aspects of the culture industry. There will be MARN Salons involving nationally known art critics. Plans for the gallery include two-or-three members exhibitions each year plus two or three shows for non-members. There is also a “market,” a set of high shelves in the café where MARN members can sell their work.

The space has been used for programs hosted by MIAD, Portrait Society Gallery and other organizations but in light of the Delta variant, MARN has capped attendance at events to 50 people. “Our model is based on participation from the general public,” Montoya says. “We’d love to see this place packed but we’re going to hold off.”

Coffee + Wine by Interval at the MARN ART + CULTURE HUB will be open for Gallery Night MKE, Oct. 15-16. For more information, visit marnarts.org.