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Here’s the link to an article about 21 Grand, by Larry Kelp, though it requires a fair amount of scrolling.
For your convenience, and ours, the text:
A 21 Grand Experiment
Oakland’s Pivotal Avant-Garde Art Space Hangs in There
The address may have changed, twice, and it may have recently run a gauntlet through the city’s use-permit bureaucracy, but the unique arts and performance space 21 Grand has kept its name and lofty goals intact, providing a room in Oakland for visual and musical artists to push the boundaries. Birthed at 21 Grand Ave. in July 2000, it was moved to 4949 23rd St., until that building was torn down to make way for condos. Since 2005, a former warehouse at 416 25th St. (just off Broadway) has been home. (Two homes, actually, as 21 Grand also houses Smythe’s Accordion Center.)
The simple space owes its stimulating atmosphere to the far-from-mainstream mix of visual and sound arts overseen by exhibitions director Darren Jenkins, who curates the installations, and executive director Sarah Lockhart, who books the music.
“We encouraged experimental work,” Jenkins says, “and now we see people doing more experimental work because they know there’s a place for it. Since I moved to Oakland in 1996, I found I was always going to San Francisco to find the art and music I was after.
I got involved with and curated some shows at 2310 [the spiritual predecessor of 21 Grand, on Telegraph Avenue], and some of us who wanted a more active Oakland arts scene created 21 Grand.”
The nonprofit 21 Grand provides exhibition space for artwork that will never make it into for-profit galleries and improvisational music that isn’t guaranteed to draw a large crowd—or possibly any crowd at all. “Darren and Sarah have worked tirelessly to provide a venue for the fringe-music community,” says multimedia artist Dean Santiomieri, who has taken advantage of 21 Grand to perform his electronic, music-video and spoken-word works, often all at the same time. “There is a large alternative-music community in the Bay Area, and 21 Grand is one of the very few venues for us.” Santiomieri recalled the 60th birthday tribute to composer Anthony Braxton, “where the 60 musicians outnumbered the audience.”
Continuing to present shows while working toward compliance with city and ADA regulations, 21 Grand has scheduled a group art exhibit curated by Lian Ladia in March, and the 16-band International Noise Conference, curated by Weasel Walter and No Doctors, on April 10.
21 Grand, 416 25th St., gallery open 4 p.m.–8 p.m. Thu., 4 p.m.–6 p.m. Fri., 1 p.m.–6 p.m. Sat.-Sun., (510) 444-7263, www.21grand.org.
—By Larry Kelp
—Photography by Lewis Smith