When I was in high school, I participated in repeat-visit field trips to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. This program was a formative experience that revealed and made tangible the possibilities of pursuing art as a degree and career path. At the time, the museum was housed at 1300 Gendy Street. I still recall seeing Francis Bacon’s Self-Portrait for the first time, hanging on a wall and illuminated by natural light flooding the gallery from the tall windows. Just a year after my high school graduation, the Modern moved to its newly designed building by Tadao Ando. It made sense that the longstanding and significant institution would commission a world-class edifice, tailored to fit its collection and expand its capacity.
With the museum’s move, 1300 Gendy assumed a new purpose. Dubbed the Fort Worth Community Arts Center (FWCAC), the vision for the institution was clear: to provide a visual and performing arts venue that would serve local creatives. Between 2001 and 2007 my time in Fort Worth was limited, but when I moved back to the city it was evident that FWCAC was a gathering place for artists. In 2010, I volunteered for a semester with the Arts Council of Fort Worth (now known as Arts Fort Worth), the nonprofit organization that manages the city’s grants, public art initiatives, and (at the time) the FWCAC, which had always been a city-owned building. Starting then and for the next decade, I was a regular attendee of exhibition openings at the Center.
As a multi-use building with nine galleries and two theaters in the heart of Fort Worth’s arts district, FWCAC was a prominent space with a lot to offer. Every exhibition opening felt like a family reunion, a monthly opportunity to reconnect with the creative community. Beyond the local art scene, FWCAC also hosted exhibitions by regional artists and collectives, bringing new voices to the area. Of course, it wasn’t perfect; nothing ever is. For a long time, FWCAC used a pay-to-play model, where exhibitors rented out the gallery spaces. Sometime prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization shifted its approach. With that change came deeper community engagement.
But, post-pandemic, the future of FWCAC became more and more uncertain. In 2022, Karen Wiley, who had served as President and CEO of Arts Fort Worth for seven years, announced her retirement. That same year, an assessment of the building found that it was in need of $26 million in repairs. In 2023, as the City began to consider how to move forward with the building, hundreds of people showed up to advocate that the City execute the necessary renovations and keep the venue dedicated to the arts. In 2024, the City rejected proposals submitted by both of the firms being considered for the redevelopment of the site. Since then, no further updates have been made about the building’s future. With progress stalled, Arts Fort Worth decided to vacate FWCAC and end its exhibition program.
The building was closed to the public at the end of 2024, and this week, Arts Forth Worth moved out of its offices. In the six months since the closure, it’s been clear that an important fixture in the art scene is missing and there is no replacement in sight. Fort Worth is home to world-class museums: the Modern, the Kimbell Art Museum, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the Sid Richardson Museum, the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame, and the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History. The city is also sprinkled with arts venues, including galleries that have been cornerstones of the scene for decades, such as William Campbell Gallery, Artspace111, and Gallery 440; university and college galleries like the Moudy Gallery at Texas Christian University and the Carillon Gallery at Tarrant County College South Campus; and other newer spaces such as Fort Works Art, Kinfolk House, The Pool, Easyside, and J. Peeler Howell Fine Art…