CSUF Grand Central Art Center

Grand Central Art Center

Established	1999
Location	125 N. Broadway, Santa Ana, CA 92701-8237
Coordinates
Website	Grand Central Art Center

California State University, Fullerton Grand Central Art Center is a partnership between the university and the city of Santa Ana. Based in the Downtown National Register District or Artists Village it is dedicated to the investigation and promotion of contemporary art and visual culture: regionally, nationally, and internationally through unique collaborations among artists, students, and the community.

Facilities

The art center is located ten miles (16 km) south of the main campus in the heart of downtown Santa Ana in a mixed residential, commercial and educational complex. The art center is a 45,000-square-foot (4,200 m²), half-city block deep and full city-block long, three-level structure and houses: live/studio spaces for visual arts graduate students, the Grand Central Gallery, the Project Room, Education Gallery, Grand Central Theater, Gypsy Den Café, and Hipcooks, classrooms, and a studio and living space dedicated to the center’s international artist-in-residence program.

History

Santa Ana community activist and visionary Don Cribb and Cal State Fullerton Gallery Director Mike McGee originally conceived the Grand Central Art Center in 1994 as the anchor and catalyst for a ten-square block area in the heart of downtown designated as the Artists Village. The subsequent success of the Artists Village has helped spawn a cultural and economic renewal in a city once burdened with a reputation as a crime ridden, fiscally depressed and undesirable urban environment.

The city of Santa Ana spent $7.5 million to purchase and refurbish what was the Grand Central Building—originally built in 1924 the building served as the central market for Orange County up until the 1940s. LA-based architect Steven Ehrlich did the original design for the remodel; Orange County-based Robbins, Jorgensen and Christopher was the executive architectural firm. The project has won three architectural awards.

An innovative fiscal plan allows the center to generate enough income to support basic day-to-day operations. The restaurant, classrooms and other designated areas are subleased to third-party operators. The apartments and studios are sub-leased to CSU Fullerton graduate students.

Twenty-seven apartments are available for students who have been accepted into the university MA or MFA visual and performing arts programs. Students live and work at the Grand Central Art Center. Each resident who rents an apartment is assigned a studio and parking at the twenty-four-hour parking structure on 3rd Street.

One of the residential apartments is reserved for the art center’s artist-in-residence program. In addition, an 800-square-foot (74 m²) private studio space is designated for the artist-in-residence.

The Grand Central Gallery and Project Room feature exhibitions and projects by internationally noted artists. We present four to six exhibitions a year in each space. exhibitions on a rotating bases with direct focus toward engagement with the education process.

The Theater is centrally located in the building. It is configured in-the-round and seats an audience of eighty-five. The space is programmed by the nationally recognized CSUF Department of Theatre and Dance.

GCAC Directors

• Andrea Lee Harris-McGee (1998 - 2008)
• Dennis Cubbage (2008 - 2010)
• Mike McGee (2011; interim)
• John D. Spiak (September 2011 - Present)

External links

• GCAC website

External links

• Myers, Holly. "John Spiak wants Grand Central Art Center to be engaged neighbor." Los Angeles Times. March 28, 2012.