Preserve the Archive: Community Cookout & Fundraiser

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Help Preserve the MTM Warehouse

If we can't raise the funds to save our warehouse, we will lose it.

For the past three years, the MTM warehouse in South Minneapolis has housed the nation's largest collection of plywood protest murals. With more than 1,000 murals, canvases, mirrors, body shields, and protest artifacts, this collection preserves the events, emotions, and memories of the 2020 Minneapolis Uprising. Right now, all of that is at risk.

Like many nonprofits, we've had an incredibly difficult year fundraising. As funding opportunities have disappeared and donations have slowed, we've had to make impossible decisions just to keep going. In 2026, we paused nearly all of our programming so we could focus on keeping the organization afloat. Even so, we have now fallen behind on our warehouse rent and are facing eviction.

Losing this space wouldn't just mean losing a warehouse. It would mean displacing one of the most significant collections documenting the uprising anywhere in the country. It would also mean losing a space that has become home to our community. Over the last three years we've hosted workshops, cookouts, volunteer days, artist gatherings, and moments of healing inside these walls. This building has become so much more than storage.

Since moving into this space, we've organized and cataloged the collection, professionally photographed every mural, published our first catalog, built a digital archive, grown our staff and volunteer base, and expanded our exhibitions with projects like Art and Artifact and Night and Day: Murals, Memory, and Movement. We've worked too hard and come too far to let this momentum disappear because we couldn't pay the rent.

So we're asking for your help.

Join us for our Preserve the Archive Community Cookout at the MTM Headquarters. Come eat with us, bring a friend, bid in the silent auction, buy some merch, or make a donation. Every dollar raised will go toward catching up on our rent and keeping the warehouse open through the end of the year.

This collection belongs to our community. If it's meant to have a future, we're going to need our community's help to get it there.