Yellow House

Yellow House sits at 577 King Street, in the pocket of Jacksonville between Riverside, Lackawanna, and Mixon Town, close enough to CoRK Arts District that the two are practically neighbors. It was founded by Hope McMath, who spent 22 years at the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, the last eight of them as executive director, before starting Yellow House as a smaller, more overtly activist space. The name comes from her grandfather’s yellow-painted house in Toledo, Ohio, a building central to her own political and artistic education, and the organization also nods to Vincent van Gogh’s 1888 yellow studio in Arles as a model for art made collaboratively rather than in isolation.

The mission is explicit rather than vague: Yellow House says it exists to connect art and community to build understanding, inspire empathy, and spark civic engagement, and it describes itself as a space for artists, poets, and activists who speak truth to power. That is not marketing language you have to squint to find evidence for. Past exhibitions have tackled subjects most galleries steer away from, including Screams Echo: The Legacy of Lynching, which examined eight lynchings in Duval County between 1909 and 1925 through work by artists Deja Echols, Erin Kendrick, and Marsha Hatcher alongside writing by Bobbie O’Connor, paired with a community altar and a companion Community Tree Project where visitors tie ribbons carrying grief, prayers, or wishes, with poetry contributed by Yvette Angelique Hyater-Adams.

The gallery has also given its walls over to teenagers: a show called Black, As Is featured ten visual artists and eighteen poets from the Black Arts project at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, exploring identity, trauma, and joy in the Black youth experience, with an opening night, a poetry reading, and a family day built around it, and admission that asked for donations of food, art supplies, hygiene products, or books rather than a ticket price. That pattern, free admission with a suggested in-kind donation, seems to be the norm here rather than the exception. More recent 2025 programming has included exhibitions titled Louder Than Fear, Duval Displaced/Duval Dis-Place, and a solo exhibit from artist Marsha Hatcher.

Regular hours are limited and worth checking before you drive over: Wednesdays from noon to 7pm and Saturdays from 11am to 2pm, with the gallery noting it is happily open by appointment for one person or groups outside those windows, plus occasional extended evening hours announced around specific exhibition openings. The phone number is 904-419-9180. Because the space runs on a small nonprofit model built around McMath’s own curatorial and educational work, she also works as a printmaker doing relief printing and letterpress, a visit here feels less like a gallery outing and more like walking into an ongoing community conversation about race, gender, and place in Jacksonville, which is exactly what it is designed to be.