Dec 10, 2024
In Part 2, we pick up where we
left off in Part 1. Allegra was bartending at Second City in
Chicago. The day of her graduation ceremony, at Columbia College
Chicago, she packed up all her belongings and drove to LA with a
friend.
Allegra really wanted to be in
California. Not yet totally sure about what she was gonna do, she
took the plunge, so to speak. She'd realized that she wasn't going
to pursue art. But she figured, correctly, that in addition to the
warmer climate, there would be opportunities to seize in Los
Angeles. But Allegra soon found that the challenges of a
pre-smartphone Southern California were overwhelming.
But she gave it a go. Allegra
managed to get what she refers to today as "the worst job she's
ever had in her life"—taking school photos of kids. On September
11, 2001, as planes hit the Twin Towers on the other side of the
continent, Allegra was at a school in LA taking photos of
schoolchildren.
Later that day, she had a job
interview that, of course, required driving. The freeways were
empty, which is an eerie sight. But she got that job. And that's
the story of how Allegra Madsen became an art handler.
Following a couple of years
hanging art (Warhol's Mao and Brillo
Boxes among the art Allegra handled), she dabbled in
freelance work, putting art up on walls in the homes of Los Angeles
billionaires among them. Several years into that, Allegra started
to feel that energy—this time, pushing her away from
LA.
She packed up her red sports
car again (a 1988 Porsche, by the way) and headed to The Bay. Going
back to the time in her life when she immersed herself in books,
Beat writers caught Allegra's imagination. She recounts her first
visit to San Francisco and her eventual move north. Like me, she
had no idea that she'd still be here all these decades
later.
It took Allegra some time to
"unpack," so to speak. She moved around The Bay a little, before
eventually settling back a block from her first spot in Oakland,
where she lives today.
She went to school at CCA (then
known as CCAC) and studied curatorial practice. It's where she
discovered and got really into social art practices, which she goes
into in our talk. "Using art to build community," essentially. Her
thesis project took place on Third Street, just as the light rail
was being built along that corridor. Her thesis exhibition took
place at the Bayview Opera
House.
A few years after getting her
Master's degree, Allegra opened a cafe in Temescal in Oakland. The
neighborhood was rapidly gentrifying at the time, and she wanted to
have a space where folks from many different walks of life could
visit and have a good experience.
Allegra sold the café after
about five years. She pivoted back to art and event planning. Most
of her work took the form of events in the Bayview. And part of
that event planning involved movie programming. This led to a role
at the BVOH, where she did more movie showings.
During her time at the opera
house, she began to partner with Frameline. In 2021, she joined the
film fest org as programming director. It was the first year since
the pandemic started, and Allegra believes part of why she was
hired is that she had proven that she could program movies in
"weird" places. They hosted a movie as part of Pride that summer at
Oracle Park and did some drive-ins (remember those?).
In late 2023, Allegra became
interim executive director of Frameline. She assumed the permanent
job this February.
Follow Frameline on Instagram
and other social media to stay up to date on everything they
do.
We end the podcast with
Allegra's take on our theme this season: Keep it
local.
We recorded this podcast in the
Frameline office in South of Market in November
2024.
Photography by Dan Hernandez