R.I.P. Armoury Gallery

Here's another announcement Decider doesn't want to make: After just 18 months, the Armoury Gallery has closed up shop for a variety of reasons, "not least of them being financial," according to a statement. Owners Jessica Steeber and Cassandra Smith intend to continue making art, but they'll no longer be spending their Saturdays waiting for visitors in the Fortress Building. If you never managed to make it there, you can still view what you missed at the gallery's online archive. Then kick yourself for not going in person, because it was a bold and inspiring space.

Steeber and Smith also helped create the Milwaukee Independent Gallery Association, a group of galleries promoting contemporary art in Milwaukee. MIGA originally included nine art spaces, but since its inception about a year ago, it's lost the White Whale Collective, Spackle Gallery, Fasten, Paper Boat Boutique And Gallery, and now Armoury Gallery. True, it's gained Green Gallery East, and we like that, but it's a little depressing to watch one interesting art space after another go out of business.

We know everybody's poor right now—oh, how we know—but when it comes time to make a purchase, can we all just try to do it somewhere small and local? And we beg the remaining monied folks out there, too—the ones who at least feign interest in the arts and culture: please, please throw some cash at the little guys. We've lost bookstores, a record store, boutiques, and gallery after gallery. We're very afraid that in five years the only place to shop and eat will be some windowless, soulless Wal-mart with an attached combo pizza-and-subs fast food outlet selling godawful, ugly products and nothing but posters of kittens to hang on our walls. And that will make us cry, no matter how cute those kittens are.