The Abridged version:
- Sites of Vacancy places art exhibitions in empty, abandoned spaces around Sacramento.
- The latest exhibition, “Coordinates: Dispatch,” is housed at the Albert Winn Park fire dispatch station, which has been vacant for more than two decades.
- “Coordinates: Dispatch” features works from 27 local artists, curated by Sites of Vacancy managing partner and curator Faith McKinnie.
This story was reported by a member of the Abridged by PBS KVIE Community Reporters program. The Community Reporters program empowers local residents to report stories with guidance and support from the Abridged editorial staff.
An immersive art exhibition is transforming a long-vacant civic landmark into one of Sacramento’s most ambitious contemporary art experiences.
“Coordinates: Dispatch,” running now through Oct. 10, is a partnership to bring attention to the Albert Winn Park fire dispatch station, a building that has been vacant for more than 20 years, said organizer and curator Faith McKinnie.
“We are working at the intersection of contemporary art and the built environment,” she explained in her orange, paint-spattered overalls as she painted walls two days before the event opened.
To bring “Coordinates: Dispatch” to Winn Park, McKinnie issued a call for proposals to 62 local artists to the location; she accepted 27 artists’ proposals.
Mysterious building with an important past
“I’ve walked by this site so many times wondering what was inside this building, not really knowing its history,” she said, looking at the half-bunker, half-jewel box Art Deco poured concrete building at 28th and O streets.
As managing partner and curator for Sites of Vacancy, the local artist has transformed the building into an immersive community art experience as a collaboration with artists, commercial sponsors and the city’s Midtown Association.
Of all the work she has done, “Coordinates: Dispatch” is one of her most ambitious undertakings; under a revenue-sharing arrangement, artists will receive stipends for art supplies and an honorarium that will depend on how many tickets sell at $25 plus fees.
Sacramento’s fiery history
“It turns out this little building is important to Sacramento’s history,” said Ty Smith, city historian and director of the Center for Sacramento History, who was on hand for the opening of the exhibit. Smith was just named city historian in June.
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The dispatch station was built in 1937 under the Works Progress Administration, a federal job program that also built other works in the area like the Tower Bridge. As the city’s central dispatch station, the site relayed emergency response signals to alarm boxes in neighborhoods throughout town.
Operations at the station ended decades ago as the city moved to radio and computer-aided dispatch.
The engine behind Sites of Vacancy
It is clear that McKinnie is the engine behind Sites of Vacancy, bringing together her artistic, public relations, and fundraising skills to drive community change. Her extensive background includes serving as the community engagement coordinator for the Crocker Art Museum and founding the Black Artist Foundry.
Her professional achievements have earned her widespread recognition, including the National Endowment for the Arts Seeding Creativity Award and the Sacramento Observer’s ONYX Top 25 Black Leaders Award. McKinnie has also been honored as one of the Midtown Business Association’s Top 40 Artists, a Sacramento Bee & Nehemiah Emerging Leadership Program Black Change Maker, and a Sacramento Kings & Crown Royal Culture Creator.
Behind a trendy pair of gold wire-frame aviators, her eyes welled lightly when artists’ profit-sharing came up. Before the event opened, she still owed artists $14,000 for their work.
“Ticket revenue is helping close that gap, but that’s bittersweet because my goal is to preserve as much of the net ticket revenue as possible for the artists’ revenue sharing,” McKinnie said.
Aside from ticket sales, the project has been backed by a small group of sponsors, individual supporters, and ultimately ticket buyers, and McKinney occasionally fills in gaps personally to keep things moving, she said.
“It makes me emotional,” she said. “I think there needs to be a conversation on how we fund these really ambitious projects, how to find sponsors, how to make sure artists get paid.”
“Success for me is defined by every artist walking away with a chunk of money.”
Reimagining Sacramento’s empty spaces
Sites of Vacancy has hosted several events in the past to put the spotlight on unoccupied buildings. In March 2022, she curated “Coordinates: IcePac,” an event at the former Pacific satellite news broadcast headquarters at 16th and S streets that brought a site-specific exhibit to the building before it was demolished. Sites of Vacancy also curated a temporary exhibit in the vacant former Starbucks site at 16th and J streets that called attention to its lack of use.
Word has gotten out about what Sites for Vacancy does.
“Developers have seen what we’ve done,” McKinnie said. While initially she approached the city for opportunities, now, the Sacramento Midtown Association works directly with McKinnie, giving her an opportunity grounded in her experience in the art, public relations and fundraising worlds.
“We reimagine underutilized places through immersive exhibitions,” she explained, comparing the pop-ups to artistic “interventions” to bring a spotlight to potential uses of the space. “Each project responds directly to the history, architecture, and social context of a place, transforming how audiences experience and understand it.”
Midtown Association and artists align
Sacramento’s Midtown Association, a neighborhood improvement agency, played a vital role in “Coordinates: Dispatch,” McKinnie said.
The group’s associate director of communications, Vince Marchesi, said he’s had his eye on the Winn Park building, citing an opportunity.
“In seeing work that Faith McKinnie has previously done through Sites of Vacancy, we knew that she had experience with this specific type of curation, which was coming into a vacant building and being able to connect with local artists and have an opportunity to bring a blank canvas to life with so much great local art,” Marchesi said.
The pop-up, limited-time exhibitions have worked well, he added.
“I would imagine most Sacramentans have seen and have had no idea what the cultural significance of the building was. So this becomes an opportunity for them to not only come in and learn that this was a former fire alarm dispatch station, but now they’re seeing artists’ interpretation of what that message could mean in an artistic sense.”
Artists who submitted work concurred. This sense of place became obvious at the Winn Park dispatch station. One artwork featured a window bursting into orange and yellow flames with the words, “The Fire Next Time,” a longtime cry for social justice and racial reckoning.
Matt Flores’ projection piece created optical illusions to fill the dark downstairs of the dispatch station, which had been stripped bare to its walls and stairs when the installation arrived.
“Because it has industrial, concrete walls, I wanted to add some greenery and a little bit of life to it,” Flores said.
Artist Julie Crum attended a few prior Sites of Vacancy exhibitions and always wanted to submit her work. Her joint submission with Fijian artist Tiranjini Pillai was accepted: a wall mural showing how crucial place is to people, in this case Fiji and the Philippines.
“This has been monumental. It’s rare to have such an amalgamation of art processes,” she said of working with the other artists. In a sense, she says, the event brings about the community it is celebrating.
A hyperlocal call to action
McKinnie expects the reopening of the dispatch station as an art venue to shift how people experience Winn Park and see its possibilities.
While “Coordinates: Dispatch” is a reminder of how Sacramento once responded to crises, McKinnie said there are current crises like homelessness that need alarms sounded.
“I’ve been here working every day for the past month, 12 hours a day. You just see the unhoused and mental health problems here, right?” McKinnie pointed to wandering men and women with carts and blankets around the site. “Our work is hyperlocal. People are literally setting up home on the steps of this building. They’re using the park as a restroom because there’s no infrastructure for them.”
McKinnie said that even if the exhibit resulted in just getting a restroom for the unhoused in the park, she’s done her work through art.
What’s next?
McKinnie was knee-deep in this project, covered in paint and droplets of sweat, after a month of getting ready. Each project depends on the success of the one before it.
The artist/curator still has her eyes on future collaborations. “I’m hoping that the conversations that these artists are having inside will help in what the city can do,” she said. “There are so many opportunities for commercial partnership in future endeavors,” she insisted.
We’ll just keep on showing up in these vacant spots, asking, “How do we transform them for the public?”
James Smith is a member of the Abridged Community Reporters program. A retired nurse investigator for the state of California, James studies French and bikes along the American River Parkway in his free time. He lives in Midtown with his husband of 26 years.
