On your right, look for the boxy building with a pale, translucent green facade that seems to softly glow, with a warm wooden entry set back beneath the trees.
This is the Girls’ Club Foundation, and from the outside it already feels like it’s letting you in on a secret… just not all at once. In daylight, those fiberglass-resin panels read like a smooth, milky skin. But at night, when they’re lit from behind, the whole place turns into this gentle lantern on the block. It’s part gallery, part beacon-like the building is saying, “Yes, art is in here… and no, you can’t rush it.”
Girls’ Club is a privately funded nonprofit, founded in 2006 by artist Francie Bishop Good and her husband, David W. Horvitz. Their big idea was simple, and kind of wild when you think about it: create a space in downtown Fort Lauderdale dedicated primarily to contemporary art by women-local artists alongside major names from around the world, and across a wide range of backgrounds. Not “women’s art” as a side category… but women as the main event. Imagine that.
Step closer and notice how the architecture matches the mission. The building was designed by Fort Lauderdale architect Margi Glavovic Nothard, and the interior is made to shapeshift: pivoting, movable walls so exhibitions can keep changing without the space feeling trapped in one layout. It’s basically a gallery that refuses to sit still-appropriate for contemporary art, and honestly… for life.
Their first exhibition opened in October 2007 with a show called “Talking Heads.” The theme was portraiture-but not just polite faces on a wall. Think photographs, paintings, and moving-image pieces that asked what a “portrait” even is. The works came from the Good-Horvitz collection, plus loans from other collections and galleries, and even directly from local artists’ studios-fresh enough that you can practically smell the paint. That show ran for a year, which is a confident way to open your doors.
Then the exhibitions kept pushing. “Under The Influence” looked at how artists don’t stay in neat lanes-how they curate, write, critique, and generally stir the pot of community life. “Set To Manual” leaned hard into hand-made labor-animations painted by hand, film physically altered, drawings made by pricking holes in paper… the kind of work that makes your wrist hurt just thinking about it. Later, shows played with big ideas like iteration and copying-what counts as “the original” when our lives are basically screenshots of screenshots.
And Girls’ Club doesn’t pretend the gallery walls are the whole world. Their mission includes education and career support for female artists, plus being a resource for students, scholars, curators, and working artists. They also make a point of helping local artists reach national and international audiences-through online projects, interviews, written pieces, and a blog that extends the conversation beyond this very quiet curb you’re standing on.
So yeah… from the outside it’s calm. But inside, it’s built for questions.
When you’re ready, Fort Lauderdale History Center is a 4-minute walk heading north.
