After 13 years as a cornerstone of Galveston’s creative scene, The Proletariat will close following a final Fat Tuesday celebration and reopen in June under a new concept. Owner Becky Major says the mission will remain rooted in community and the arts.
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The Proletariat, a mainstay of Galveston’s arts community for more than a decade, will close after a final Fat Tuesday wake and reopen in June under a new concept, owner Becky Major confirmed this week.
Major declined to detail what comes next for the space, citing plans still in development. But she said the venue’s creative focus and community-driven spirit will remain intact.
“I feel like Galveston has reinvented itself so many times: the grade-raising, the seawall,” Major said. “I guess [this] would be a reinvention, a rebirth, changing with the times because we have to.”
For 13 years, The Proletariat has operated as an art gallery, performance venue, cafe, coffeehouse, and bar—sometimes all at once. The space, located in the National Hotel Artists Lofts building, has hosted lectures, poetry readings, concerts, weddings, baby showers, and graduation parties.
Major, who also manages the 29-unit apartment building, helped launch the venue in 2012 after Hurricane Ike. Previously, eight feet of stormwater filled the space, leaving it incomplete for years. A restaurant tenant never opened but installed a vent hood in the building’s old elevator shaft.
“It was just so weird where they decided to put their money,” Major said.
When Major and friends transformed the unfinished room—then known as The Gallery—into a pop-up art space, it lacked electricity, air conditioning, and running water. They strung extension cords from her upstairs apartment and used yardsticks and work lights to illuminate art mounted on paper-covered beams.
Bands en route to South by Southwest soon performed there. “We would give the alcohol away so that we could pay the musicians to perform,” Major said.
As renovations brought the space up to code, it formally became The Proletariat in 2015. Its programming reflected its name, emphasizing accessibility and grassroots creativity. “It really has been the common people's space, the artists' space,” Major said.
Major, a veteran of Galveston’s Cultural Arts Commission and Theater and Arts Partnership, curated unconventional events, including the “Unshow,” where guests wrote on papered walls under black lights, and Dia de los Muertos performances featuring “living statues.”
The Proletariat’s final event will be a six-hour Fat Tuesday celebration before the space closes and prepares for its next chapter. Major said the reinvention reflects the island’s history of resilience—and its ongoing commitment to the arts.
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