LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Exciting things are happening at Louisville Visual Art’s Portland warehouse. 

What You Need To Know

  • Louisville Visual Art is renovating its space in the Portland neighborhood

  • The renovation plan includes a gallery, artist studios, and creative classrooms

  • LVA hopes to address inequity issues the community faces

  • LVA resources and programming will be within walking distance of students

The organization that serves thousands of kids and hundreds of emerging artists each year is transforming its warehouse into a creative hub.

Grant Johnson is excited about the gallery, artist studios, and three creative classrooms in the works at the warehouse.

“Some of those have been here in one form or another for a while, but we’re going to just make it much, much more updated. We’re going to have the classrooms fit out in such a way that they can be used to teach our art classes, but also they can potentially be used for other purposes that serve the community,” says Johnson. 

Johnson says LVA will look for organizations that could use the space when it’s not fully programmed. 

A big focus will be on those in the immediate neighborhood of Portland and adjacent neighborhoods of Russell, California and Shawnee.

“Our idea is to make what we’re calling right now a creative cultural center for this part of the city,” says Johnson. “We know that there are issues in terms of transportation for a lot of the families that live in these neighborhoods. So we want to make it as easy as possible for young people, school-age students who want to be at art classes to be able to get here.”

LVA believes that providing its programming and resources to the underserved community will expand options for young people in the area. 

“Having artist studios here in the same building where we run classes for young people, part of what will happen there is that those young students will see professional artists working in their studios and they’ll understand that that’s an option, that’s a path for them potentially in their life,” says Johnson. 

Instead of doing the entire renovation at once, they will complete it in phases to allow LVA to use the building more fully after the first phase is done.

“Specifically, so that we can hear from the community what they would like to see and before the next phase begins. We can incorporate that input into the design and into the priorities for what happens in the building,” says Johnson. 

The first phase includes adding an access ramp and staircase outside and bathrooms inside to allow for programming in the space. 

It will be another two to three months before the first phase is complete. 

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