18th Street Arts Center

The 18th Street Arts Complex (18SAC) will lead two community engagement projects to mark two significant local histories: the history of Black culture in Santa Monica and the groundbreaking satellite map of Earth created by local artist Tom Van Sant. 18SAC will bring in historians, artists, archivists, and curators to imagine and execute these projects. The first project will revive Santa Monica’s Black culture and history by developing a Black cultural “historic district” marked by public artworks at important sites. They will engage the Black community and activate archives of ephemera and oral histories. The second project will communicate the complex science of global warming to the public with a functioning “Earth Situation Room”. The project was originally conceived as part of his creation known as Earth from Space—the first satellite composite map of the Earth free of clouds.