With Open Studios, LMCC invites the public into the workspaces and creative processes of the 2026 Cohort of Arts Center Residents. These open house events are free and welcoming, informal, and accessible to all ages. Artist activations will take place throughout the day, including a screening, live broadcast, listening installation, a ClimArt Cafe, and participatory activities. RSVP and let us know you’re attending!

July Open Studios Artist Activations: 

Rachel Garber Cole, My Family Photos |  All Day
Please come and use my family photos to tell me stories from your own life. It will be fun and you can voyeur into someone else’s life while I try and voyeur into yours! The workshop is part of project development for my residency project My Family Photos, which explores 20th century narratives of time and progress against a 21st century backdrop of the climate crisis.

Tijay Mohammed, Message to My Ancestors |  All Day
Participants are invited to write messages and prayers to their ancestors on pieces of fabric, which are then woven into a collective installation at AnkhLave House 408B Colonels Row on Governors Island. Honoring African traditions of ancestral remembrance, the evolving installation becomes a sacred space for emotional release, cultural pride, collective reflection, and the enduring celebration of ancestral wisdom.

Darla Migan, eat slow sketch show : pilot episode |  All Day
eat slow sketch show is a Black queer experimental broadcast universe dreamt through food, live sonic scoring, communal play, and shared nourishment as tools for collective liberation. this pilot episode builds a world inside a volcano. an invitation to practice overflowing, to refuse the slow quiet training of the self into something smaller than what it actually is. participants move through play, movement, performance, and a shared meal. the only way out is through. and we are going out together.

Featuring: 
Sur, creator, host spatial designer, cook
zella, featured guest, movement facilitator, co-experimenter
darla, curator, community participant
the experimental school for Black imagination, co presenting organization
governors island, filming location, two-day production

Nicole Cooper, ClimART Cafe & LMCC Artist Studio Tour | 90 minutes, 12-1:30pm
Share your emotions about climate change with a caring community, then explore the creative climate artwork of LMCC resident artists on a studio tour. Art resonates with our deepest feelings—this gathering offers space for reflection, imagination, and connection. WHAT TO EXPECT: Introductions, grounding meditation, and open discussion of climate emotions. Led by resident artist Nicole Cooper in partnership with Climate Cafe NYC and Climate Imaginarium, followed by a tour of 2-3 resident studios. No experience necessary. Space limited to 12! Reservations are required: Please RSVP here.

Phoebus Osborne, Oh, it’s my ass and my anus | 25 minute screenings, 12-2pm
A single-channel version of a 4-channel video work by Phoebus Osborne, Oh, it’s my ass and my anus explores underground and interior environments as sites of resistance, intimacy, and imagination. Weaving footage of limestone caves, cemeteries, bathroom DJ sets, queer beaches, and domestic spaces, the piece unfolds as a sensorial field. A layered soundscape of field recordings, vocals, and rhythmic pulses guides viewers into altered states of attention, inviting embodied perception and a luminous, collective interiority.

Lisa Schonberg, The Insects are Present | 2pm
A work-in-progress listening experience based on Lisa’s sonic research on the ephemeral, rich compost habitats at Earth Matter on Governor’s Island. The Insects are Present is a public installation of a modular, generative music composition system. This system of recording, processing, and playback prompts interactions between real-time environmental sounds, human messages, and Schonberg’s percussion, with a focus on hidden soundscapes of insects and other invertebrates.

Marie Lloyd Paspe, this is how we disappear | 3pm
It is said that engkanto (Tagalog for *spirits*) live in the wilderness, quiet paths, and the large trees in the Philippines. If one passes them without paying their respects, one may get sick. What if societies no longer re-member how to ask nature for her permission to pass — slowly, slowly, fragments of ancestral bodies erode, and with them, their memory. Through acts of retrieval, re-membering, labor, and home tending, choreopoetics and a shifting soundscape physicalize the resilience of the engkanto and the lands of the Global South most vulnerable to climate change. this is how we disappear is a durational work to come walk through and go as you need. As you visit, take our mom’s advice and say “tabi tabi po,” or “may I pass,” to pay respects to the unseen spirits that exist within the natural world.

Marie Lloyd Paspe
gushes (music)
Ching-I Chang (handwoven textiles)

Activations are subject to change. 

Also on July 25 at the Arts Center:

From 1-3pm, take part in Recycled Runway, a free, family-friendly art-making workshop with Sari Nordman. Create a colorful, one-of-a-kind wearable accessory from recycled plastic that celebrates your individual NYC style! Central to her practice, Nordman addresses eco-anxiety through environmental art projects that foster social engagement and utilize recycled plastic. The workshop will be ongoing so visitors are welcome to participate for as long as they would like. Reservations encouraged for headcount and supplies.

At 3:15pm, join LMCC Artistic Director, Moe Yousuf, artist Leslie Wayne and academics from Stony Brook University for a City of Water Day panel as they discuss issues at the intersection of art-making, climate change and the environment. Reservations encouraged.

About The Arts Center Residency

The 2026 Arts Center Residency cohort includes 18 artists, one On-Site Assistant, and, for the first time, two Scholars-in-Residence from Stony Brook University and an Organization-in-Residence: Seaweed City.

2026 marks the inaugural year of a new partnership with Stony Brook University and Seaweed City, expanding the residency as a platform for sustained climate inquiry across artistic and academic disciplines.

LMCC’s 2026 Arts Center Residents are Garrett Allen, Rachel Garber Cole, Nicole Cooper, RedMoon Arts Movement Inc, Duy Hoàng, Derek Lee McPhatter, Tijay Mohammed, Sari Nordman, Sabrina Merayo Nuñez, Phoebus Osborne, Marie Lloyd Paspe, Gabriela Salazar, Lisa Ann Schonberg, Sara Stern, Nora Treatbaby, Tanika I. Williams, Darla Migan (Stony Brook University) Nobuho Nagasawa (Stony Brook University), Seaweed City, (Organization-in-Residence), and Noga Cohen (On-Site Assistant).

Learn more about the residency here.

Photo by Gregory Gentert