The McLean County Arts Center in Downtown Bloomington has reopened after a flea infiltration led to the nonprofit's closing for just over a week.
The center’s staff is installing new exhibitions in its galleries, which plan to be up by the end of Friday and available for viewing on Saturday.
While the building was closed the arts center underwent several cleaning procedures including a contractor spraying the building, McLean County Arts Center Executive Director Doug Johnson said. Although the building is reopened, the center is still dedicated to further treating the issue.
“Several treatments will be necessary,” Johnson said. “They spray and then all the live fleas die and then the hatchlings are born a week later and then you spray again. It's an attenuated process.”
Treating the issue has cost the arts center under $2,000 so far, Johnson said.
Classes and exhibits had to be closed and cancelled during the closure as well. Information about the exhibits can be accessed online.
“The exhibitions that we had were truncated and in an abundance of caution we canceled classes for that time period, which… is the right decision,” Johnson said. “We're all about transparency. So we didn't want everyone to imagine there was something really horrible, but we also didn't want our patrons and our artists and everyone else to bring a problem home with them unnecessarily.”
The root of the building’s flea infestation came from a nearby property that the arts center owns. The building is currently being used as a rental home and after the previous residents left the house, the bugs stayed put. They then traveled to the arts center after staff cleaned out the apartment and brought the fleas back with them.
"Fleas like socks apparently," Johnson quipped.
New space for ceramics
The flea infestation is an itchy bump in a larger plan to turn the two-unit rental home into something bigger. Johnson said that they plan to tear the building down in the future and turn it into a three-unit ceramic studio.
“The thing about a ceramics program is a lot of people love ceramics, but it's not something you can really do at home,” Johnson said. “One of our biggest issues with our classes is that because they've been in the basement of our building that registration size is pretty small, and so by expanding into these other spaces we can have a class of 18 instead of a class of eight.”
McLean County Arts Center's vision for the building will allow it to better serve the community and create more support for programming, Johnson said. But the plan is long term and Johnson estimated will likely cost more than $5 million.
“My goal is that by the time I retire that we will have all this in place and the structures will be in place and we'll be operating with all capability that we can best serve our community,” Johnson said.
To raise enough money to reach Johnson’s goals, the arts center will not only need to continue classes and its public and private partnerships, but also receive grant money. Arts Alliance Illinois brought in $2 million for the Bloomington Center for Performing Arts for the Creativity Center in 2017.
“There will be opportunities for other funds and grants to be made available, and we're certainly looking at how we can do all those things,” Johnson said.
The potential funding could be used for the ceramic studio that would offer hand building, wheel throwing and different sorts of kilns and different firing cones. It is also a way for the arts center to expand its space, which has been a persisting problem for the center.
Johnson has been with McLean County Arts Center for over 20 years and said the nonprofit has been dealing with limited space since he started.
“In order for us to successfully move forward and provide the services I think the community needs, expanding that space would be terrific,” Johnson said. “Right now we have online registration and we have classes that fill up within 10 minutes of that online registration being available. So there is an expressed need.”
