Intersection for the Arts

Intersection for the Arts (San Francisco, CA) is San Francisco’s oldest alternative art space. Located in the Mission District, Intersection is home to the Campo Santo theater company, the ESP Dance company, an art gallery, music and literary performance series and a fiscal sponsor for hundreds of small arts organizations and individual artists. Founded in 1965, Intersection has been supported by the Hewlett Foundation since 19XX and run by executive director Deborah Cullinan for the last decade. During this period Intersection has produced, and presented, new work that has consistently met with critical acclaim and popular success. Performances in their 75-seat black box theater routinely sell out and, increasingly, off-site collaborations at venues such as the Brava Theater and the De Young Museum of Fine Arts, have served to expand Intersection’s reach into the greater San Francisco community. Building on the heels of a 2007 organizational effectiveness grant to undertake strategic planning and to conduct a facility assessment, this grant will anchor Intersection’s 2008 campaign to purchase and renovate a building in San Francisco’s Mission district. The grant represents 60% of the total capital required to buy the property at 777 Valencia Street, improve its existing theater, gallery and office spaces and support the organization’s ongoing artistic programming as it takes this bold step. The new home doubles the size of Intersection’s current venue (10,000 square feet versus 5,000) and provides new performance, rehearsal and office space to other leading performing arts organizations in the region. Intersection is a hot-house of artistic activity, and a bedrock of the Mission neighborhood’s cultural life that has simply outgrown the facility it’s occupied for twenty years. As such Intersection’s existence is of central importance to our strategic objectives to support the creation of exceptional works of performing art and to provide increased access for artists and audiences to participate in the arts. (Capital, $1,500,000/1; 31% of project budget)