Additional programs include
Oct 4, Sat, 1-6pm: Our Streets Zine Fest
OUR STREETS ZINE FEST is a companion to the “Scratching the Surface” exhibition underscoring how Skid Row connects us all in both struggle and resistance. Displacement, raids, over policing, gentrification, discrimination, access to medical resources, surveillance, food and housing insecurity are fights that we share. The Zine Fest is a space where zinster, diy publishers, art and cultural workers will gather and exchange info and resources across struggles

Oct 10, Fri, 5-7pm: Skid Row Poetry: Inklings of a History
How is poetry practiced in Skid Row? What do Skid Row poets know that poets outside the neighborhood might have forgotten? Using research from the Museum archives, this talk will scratch the surface on the history and poetry in Skid Row, and will look at how current Skid Row poets are approaching the art form.

Oct 24, Fri, 5-7pm: Discussion / Show&Tell of Museum’s Archive and Community Archiving
Skid Row Archive: What’s in the archive? Why does it matter? The presentation will focus on archival materials from the Skid Row Archive’s collections. During the discussion, Media Archivist, Henry Apodaca and Archivist, Zach Rutland will talk about work done in the archive, the scope of the collections including subjects and themes, and the importance of independent, community based-archiving.

Los Angeles, CA – Los Angeles Poverty Department is pleased to announce the opening celebration of our new exhibition “Scratching the Surface—40 Years of Visual Arts in Skid Row” on Saturday September 6 at 5 pm at Skid Row History Museum & Archive, 250 S. Broadway in downtown Los Angeles. “Scratching the Surface” is a glimpse into the history and continuity of art and cultural production the neighborhood from 1985 to 2025. As the exhibition title suggests, there is much more Skid Row art—past, present, and future—to be discovered.

Through visual arts, the exhibition evidences a strong neighborhood identity, while also making local and global connections to struggles against oppression and on the side of dignified life for everyone. The exhibition uplifts decades of existing interwoven creative endeavors, using multiple formal and informal archives – Community Arts Depot, the Skid Row History Museum’s Archive, Studio 526, Art Works Continuum, UCEPP – as well as individual collections to demonstrate that “we already are.”

On view from September 6 through October 25, “Scratching the Surface,” is curated by art worker and Community Arts Depot co-founder Hayk Makhmuryan, in collaboration with artist/archivist Jaiye Kamson and designer Matthew Stewart. The museum is open to the public from 2 to 5 pm, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and by appointment. The exhibition features works by more than 50 artists: paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures, banners, masks, reproductions of murals and ephemeral artifacts.

Curator Makhmuryan comments:
“Each artwork is a window into the author’s inspiration and motivations, as well as the violent reality of the criminalizing ‘resolutions’ our society often offers instead of meeting everyone’s basic human needs. Sometimes it’s a glimpse into a flourishing local photography club, other times it’s an unfinished piece, because of untimely, preventable death, a ‘social murder.’ At all times, it’s work that reflects the many sides of Skid Row, a neighborhood that is part of downtown, part of Los Angeles region, part of Black LA, immigrant LA, indigenous Tovaangar, and part of the poor, unhoused, tenant, working class struggle for collective liberation.”

Additional public programs to be announced will include a mini Zine Fest, discussion about community archives, and a dive into history of poetry and writers’ groups in Skid Row.

About Community Arts Depot (The Depot)
The Depot is an artwork storage project in LA’s Skid Row neighborhood. The project starts to address this often-overlooked need, and views artwork storage as an inseparable part of adequate and equitable access to arts and culture, which is a fundamental human right, and essential for thriving and sustainable communities everywhere.