Back in 2011, before the arts and cultural explosion helped land Oakland among the top places in the world to visit, Anyka Barber opened the Betti Ono Gallery. Much of the surrounding area around City Hall was seedy and grim, dotted with vacant storefronts.

So Barber’s landlord was all too happy to find a tenant to lease the empty space on Broadway.

But in the five years since, the neighborhood has experienced a major revival. The Betti Ono Gallery played a role in that. It has become a hub for art exhibitions and performances by artists of color. And it also has been a community gathering place for dialogues about racial and social justice.

So it is a sad turn of affairs that the gallery is now fighting for its life because of the very success it helped bring about. In December, when the lease expired, Barber was informed the rent was going up 60 percent, she said. It was a $22,000-per-year hike, which a small, independent gallery like hers can’t afford.

Arts and cultural institutions have been getting squeezed out left and right by soaring rents. One big casualty was Rock Paper Scissors, the combination DIY art space, clothing shop, classroom and activist meeting spot. It was one of the founding members of Oakland Art Murmur.

The Betti Ono Gallery’s challenges are not unique. But the landlord isn’t some greedy private landowner. It’s the city of Oakland, whose officials profess to place such a high priority on the arts.

The city’s only comment on the matter was an emailed response. “The city of Oakland has been actively working directly with the Betti Ono Gallery on a plan for the gallery to continue operating in its current space.”

City spokesman Harry Hamilton said representatives had met with Barber last week.

But for now, the gallery’s future remains in limbo.

Barber said she has had to spend 90 percent of her time scrambling to find ways to make rent. “It’s definitely impacted our work, our business and our relationships in the community,” Barber said. The gallery relies on income from renting space to nonprofits, but because of the lease uncertainty, people have been turned away.

Barber started #PowerLoveResistance, a crowdfunded campaign to raise $50,000 to allow the gallery to remain in its space while she tries to renegotiate more favorable lease conditions. Meanwhile, organizers of Oakland First Fridays, who have had their own share of financial problems, announced that they’ll give 50 percent of the money people drop into baskets this Friday to the embattled gallery.

First Friday organizers say they want to raise public awareness about the very real threat of displacement for many of the city’s arts and cultural spaces.

“It’s really an issue of whether the city cares about what we as artists have done for it by going into really crummy parts of town and cleaning them up,” said Conrad Meyers, co-founder of Aggregate Space Gallery.

Meyers, president of the Oakland Art Murmur board of directors, co-authored an opinion piece in the East Bay Express calling on Oakland officials to do more than “pay lip service to the arts” and institute city policies to “protect, retain and preserve our cultural art spaces, art galleries and, most of all, our artists.”

Last year, Barber co-founded the Oakland Creative Neighborhoods Coalition to turn up the pressure on city officials.

The group has held a series of community meetings and has called for Oakland officials to establish “a robust cultural equity policy.” That includes re-establishing the Oakland Arts and Culture Commission. And, of immediate urgency, increasing affordable housing and workspaces for artists.

There has been one positive development. The city is moving forward to hire a new cultural affairs manager, though in typical fashion they’ve allotted almost no time for the search.

The City Council also approved a resolution by Councilwoman Lynette Gibson McElhaney to designate 14th street as a Black Business and Arts District. Will it be more than a symbolic gesture? That depends on how well the city puts mechanisms in place to get state and other funds. Pamela Mays McDonald, a longtime arts advocate, fears Oakland is headed in the same direction as San Francisco, where, she said, “I watched the whole development thing roll out and saw how the arts got pushed out.”

“It’s not just the Betti Ono Gallery,” McDonald said. “It’s all galleries and music venues.”

Barber is determined to stand her ground.

“What would downtown look like without the arts and culture spaces there?” Barber asked.

The same bleak desert it used to be.

Tammerlin Drummond is a columnist for the Bay Area News Group. Her column runs Thursday and Sunday. Contact her at tdrummond@bayareanewsgroup.com, or follow her at Twitter.com/tammerlin.