San Francisco’s Minnesota Street Project (MSP) opened in March 2016 on the grounds of three warehouses — two spaces for galleries located at 1275 Minnesota Street and 1150 25th Street and one hosting the Studio Program at 1240 Minnesota Street with 50 artists’ studios. Then when the neighboring Thatcher’s Gourmet Popcorn factory pulled up stakes in December 2022, the MSP Foundation, established in October 2019, acquired the massive space and turned it into a video screening gallery.
The inaugural exhibit at the new space, co-presented with Altman Siegel Gallery, opened May 11 and will be on view through June 30. The show features Richard Mosse’s multi-channel large-screen video installation, Broken Spectre (2022) from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts (SFMOMA) collection.
Previously on view in London and Melbourne, Broken Spectre focuses on the ecological devastation caused by deforestation in the Amazon, encouraged by former Brazilian President Jair Bolsanaro.
The 74-minute video installation presents black-and-white scenes of slaughterhouses, men burning and cutting down trees, illegal gold mining, and the activism of Indigenous communities affected by these realities. Aerial shots show the vast swaths of the forest that have been cleared.
At the opening, the Minnesota Street Project Foundation’s director, Rachel Sample, discussed hopes for the organization’s future, calling for more collaborative projects like Mosse’s and emphasizing how a space that offers flexibility is critical for artists to thrive.
“We can do things that seemingly don’t fit other places, but are interesting, exciting, and relevant for the community to see,” Sample said, adding that “being able to offer museum quality experiences for free for the community is unheard of.”
“This is a new space for San Francisco and the arts community,” Mosse said at the opening. “For all of us who make ambitious videos, it’s hard to find spaces where we can screen features as loud and as big as we want.”
