For 28 years, the Sweeney Art Gallery was a distinctive part of the UCR campus. Now, it’s getting a new home, new neighbors, and a much wider audience.

When the Sweeney re-opens its doors this spring, it will be located in the heart of downtown Riverside’s popular pedestrian mall. The new gallery is located on the first floor of the historic Walling building at 3800 Main Street, which sits right where the mall crosses University Avenue. The building was originally built in 1911 as the headquarters for the First National Bank of Riverside.

To renovate the historic building into a modern gallery space that would be a first-class showcase for contemporary art, the University chose internationally-recognized architect Peter Zellner to design the new gallery in association with Ontario based firm HMC Architects. Zellner is the founding principal of Zellner/Design Planning Research as well as a faculty member of SCI-Arc, the Southern California Institute of Architecture. His firm has completed several art galleries in both Los Angeles and New York City and he is a founding Board Member of LA><ART, a non-profit, independent art space in Culver City. Zellner has won fellowships for his work and teaching, and has published important books on architecture, including Hybrid Space—New Forms of Digital Architecture. In addition, Zellner has curated many exhibitions, including “Sign as Surface” and “Empire.Style.” Last September, he co-curated “Whatever Happened to LA?,” a survey of architecture and urbanism produced in LA between 1970 and 1990. Recently, his architectural projects were part of Experimental Architectures 1950-2000, an exhibition of the FRAC Centre permanent collection in Orleans, France.

Zellner believes that the renovation of the Sweeney Gallery in downtown Riverside is a unique opportunity to experiment with the role of arts institutions in the future of urban redevelopment efforts. Zellner says “What is provocative about the gallery's setting is that it is located within a revitalized historic district tied to one of the fastest growing regions in North America, the Inland Empire. From my perspective, that dynamic is not only unique but it also offers up a real challenge in terms of how we think about the relationship between art, commerce and urban redevelopment. What is so special about the new Sweeney is that its location in relationship to Main Street, Downtown Riverside and the UC-Riverside campus blurs the distinctions between urban and suburban conditions. I think that fact alone will make the gallery a compelling place to test the disciplinary boundaries of art and curatorial practice.”

In addition to its ideal setting in a growing region, Zellner also envisions the Sweeney as a model for integrating an adaptable, vibrant contemporary arts facility within an important historical and social setting: “We worked very hard to develop a highly flexible space for the gallery while also negotiating with the existing building's structure, scale and previous life as a banking hall. The gallery will be equipped for a variety of exhibition types, performances, video installations and public events. Even the reception desk will be modular and mobile so that curators will be able to set up the gallery entry sequence as they see fit. What I am very excited about is the special exhibition zone we created behind the windows along Main Street and University Avenue. These zones will function, in a way, as storefronts in a public corridor- offering artists the opportunity to create site specific installations that could potentially interact with pedestrian and vehicular traffic- during the day and at night. I am really hopeful that this feature will really activate the street corner and give the Sweeney an important profile in the redevelopment of Downtown Riverside.”

With its new location, new identity and brave new look, the UCR/Sweeney Art Gallery would like to invite all art lovers and the Inland Empire to join us for our first show in the new gallery. On April 1st, the Sweeney will premiere “People for a Better Tomorrow,” a show guest-curated by Meg Cranston that showcases the work of eight dynamic and diverse artists who are dedicated to idea that art can promote positive transformations in society.