CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) — This month, a staple of Charlottesville’s art community is celebrating its 50th anniversary.
The McGuffey Art Center, one of the country’s oldest artist-run cooperative art centers, was founded in October of 1975, during a decade full of co-ops and communes all across the country. 50 years later, McGuffey remains a staple, evolving over the years alongside the city it serves.
Local artist Judy McLeod has been a part of the center on and off since the beginning. She first joined the co-op as its first Associate member just one month after its founding. Since then, she has spent seven years on the executive council, including a stint as president last year. She called the center’s anniversary this year “simply remarkable.”
“There were many of these that started out 50 years ago,” she said, “but not many of them have prevailed.”
While she has moved away and returned multiple times over the years, McLeod has watched both McGuffey and Charlottesville evolve. While she said the City, who owns the center’s building, was tightly controlled in the beginning to “make sure we behaved properly,” she said the two entities have always had a wonderful relationship.
Over the years, the center has provided tours and classes for a countless number of children in the area and regularly hosts galleries, exhibits and adult classes for the public. The center was also critical in the early development of Charlottesville’s historic downtown mall, which was officially opened in July of 1976.
“It was deader than a doornail in the first several years,” McLeod said, “but we were part of what brought that up.”
This year, McLeod has worked alongside the center’s new President, Sam Fisher, who joined the center when they were just 23 years old.
“McGuffey really just felt like this solid institution that’s just been there forever, will always be there,” Fisher said.
As he got more involved, he realized that the center was less of a stagnant institution as he assumed, but a co-op that was actively changing.
“I was grateful that artists were putting in the work to keep McGuffey alive,” they said.
Today, the center houses 50 resident artists, 100 associates and 6 incubators artists, the last of which being younger artists selected to work at McGuffey for a set period of time.
Fisher said it’s been eye-opening to look back on McGuffey’s history, reminding him that his early perception of McGuffey as an institution that has and will always be around is just not true.
“We have to justify our existence to the city every now and then,” they said.
At the center’s 50 anniversary panel last Saturday, Fisher learned about those early years of McGuffey, which they described as like “the Wild West,” as members made rules and figured out how to operate the center as they went along.
“We’ve ironed out a lot of the wrinkles in how to do it,” McLeod said.
As its new president, Fisher said they want to maintain the sense of McGuffey being an institution in the city while also bringing back “that vital energy of ‘We’re in this together’” that drove the center in its early years.
“The community that is the McGuffey Art Center, the thing that holds us together is that we’re kind of on the same mission,” they said. “Which is enabling artists and making sure that we are contributing to the arts and culture of our community. So, bringing in the community as well.”