LMCC

CATCH Performance Series
2026-07-05 | Lower Gallery, The Arts Center at Governors Island 110 Andes Road
Taking place the day after the 4th of July, join in a convening of artists and audience for an unruly evening of performance that considers the complexities of that history and this moment (in a building first erected as a munitions warehouse for a military headquarters and repurposed as a 40,000 square-foot cultural destination).
Hosted by Carmelita Tropicana ! — “a feminist, sex-positive lesbian from Havana who borrows stereotypes to send them up, campily ridiculing bigotry, misogyny, machismo, colonialism” (The New York Times) the evening will be a raucous reconsideration of a loaded holiday.
Featuring:
Saúl Ulerio !
Martita Abril !
Sugar Vendil !
miriam elhajli !
Cat Rodriguez !
evan ray suzuki !
(Amy) Rose Khoshbin !
Cristina Moya-Palacios !
Aditi Juneja / Democracy 2076 !
Doors Open at 4:45PM | Performances start at 5:30PM | Tickets available for purchase online or at the door.
Content Warning: Guests of all ages are welcome but performances may contain simulated violence, sexual content, nudity and explicit language.

CATCH is everyone’s favorite Obie Award–winning, itinerant, rough-and-ready series of performance parties. Satisfying the promise of New York City since 2003, CATCH gives stage to an ever-expanding universe of emerging artists and downtown luminaries — pouring equal portions of community, love, and beer. catchseries.org @catchperfseries
About River To River
The River to River Festival was created in the aftermath of 9/11 to heal and celebrate New Yorkers’ resiliency through the power of art. Since 2002, hundreds of thousands of attendees have experienced the work of hundreds of artists and performers. River To River is a celebration of what is possible when artistic creativity, cultural institutions, civic bodies and corporate entities come together in mutual support.
Sponsors
Funding for the River To River Festival is provided by The NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Howard Gilman Foundation, Lily Auchincloss Foundation, and The Robert Lehman Foundation. River To River is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Additional funding for Leslie Wayne: The Unintended Blues is provided by The Deborah Buck Foundation, Morgan Stanley Blue Rider Group and New York State Council on the Arts Support for Artists Grant. Additional funding for esperanza spalding: In Concert is provided by Battery Park City Authority. Additional funding for the Bill T. Jones project is provided by Battery Park City Authority, The National Endowment for the Arts, and Harkness Foundation for Dance.

Original image of Meaghan Robichaud at CATCH 77 by Sam Leon.

July Open Studios
2026-07-25 12:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | LMCC’s Arts Center at Governors Island, Building 110, Governors Island, New York, NY, United States
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.

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

Recycled Runway
2026-07-25 13:00 - 15:00, 2026-08-29 13:00 - 15:00 | LMCC’s Arts Center at Governors Island, Building 110, Governors Island, New York, NY, United States
Recycled Runway: an All-Ages Climate Art Workshop with Sari Nordman.
Create a colorful, one-of-kind wearable accessory from recycled plastic that celebrates your individual NYC style! Arts Center Resident Artist Sari Nordman addresses eco-anxiety through environmental art projects that foster social engagement and utilize recycled plastic. Drawing on 15 years of experience as a teaching artist in NYC public schools, Sari finds joy in sharing their practice and collaborating with diverse communities.
All materials will be provided, though participants are encouraged to bring clean, colorful recycled plastics such as shopping bags, newspaper sleeves, and toilet paper or paper towel packaging. Stay for the entire event or drop in for a few minutes.
The workshop will be ongoing from 1-3pm, and visitors are welcome to participate for as long as they would like.
Reservations to help us track interest and capacity are not required but are ENCOURAGED!

Sari Nordman is an interdisciplinary artist. She creates public art projects, fiber-art installations and mixed media works. Many of her projects have been informed by climate change and respond to environmental justice issues.
Nordman’s works have been exhibited at Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning (Jamaica Flux), South Street Seaport (Art at The Edge) and Thomas Cole National Historic Site (Upstate Art Weekend). Her works have received grants from Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Frame Contemporary Art Finland and New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA). She is a participant in Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s (LMCC) 2026 Arts Center Residency Program. She has served on environmental artist panels discussing her works and the social engagement in her process at the Hirshhorn Museum, COAL + ICE at The Kennedy Center and Climate Art Panel at South Street Seaport.
Nordman develops a podcast Tower: Bridging Voices on Climate Change. She holds a M.F.A. from NYU/Tisch School of the Arts.
sarinordman.com

Photo by Sari Nordman

Hybrid Animal Encyclopedia
2026-08-01 13:00 - 15:00, 2026-08-15 13:00 - 15:00 | LMCC’s Arts Center at Governors Island, Building 110, Governors Island, New York, NY, United States
Hybrid Animal Encyclopedia: An All-Ages Workshop with Nobuho Nagasawa
Step into a space of imagination and invention, where new hybrid creatures begin to appear!
Using images from books and their own drawings, participants will create collages that merge dinosaurs with present-day animals.
As these creatures take shape, participants enter a world of storytelling and transformation. Together, these creatures form a speculative bestiary—an imagined collection of living beings that might exist in possible worlds. Each creation becomes a page in this shifting Hybrid Animal Encyclopedia, a meeting point of memory and invention, nature and imagination, past and future. Participants and families take their collages and drawings home, each holding a personal fragment of this imagined world.
The workshop will be ongoing from 1-3pm, participants are welcome to stop by and stay for as long as they wish.

Based in New York since 2001, Nobuho Nagasawa is a transnational, transdisciplinary artist trained in Berlin and invited to the United States by the California Institute of the Arts in 1986. She creates immersive, site-responsive environments shaped by time, process, and collective engagement. Approaching each site like an archaeologist, she uncovers hidden histories, ecological and psychological traces within the landscape. Her practice explores how perception, memory, and embodied experience shape our sense of place. Nagasawa has received major grants and awards, including DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service), the Rockefeller Foundation, the California Arts Council, multiple Japan Foundation grants, and the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities. Among more than forty completed public art commissions, she has earned three Design Excellence Awards. A recent project exhibited at MoMA received a dozen awards, including Woman-Designed NYC. Her work has been exhibited at Prague Castle, the Ludwig Museum, the Rufino Tamayo Museum in Mexico, and the Alexandria Library in Egypt, and represented in biennials and triennials across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. From 2026 to 2028, her work will be featured in exhibitions at Mudam (Museum of Contemporary Art Luxembourg), Lenbachhaus Munich, and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.

Photo courtesy of Nobuho Nagasawa

esperanza spalding: In Concert
2026-08-08 19:00 - 21:00 | Robert F. Wagner Jr. Park, 20 Battery Place, New York, NY, 10280, United States
esperanza spalding in collaboration with dancer, theater and filmmaker Kayla Farrish, presents an evening of new dance and music – crafted live and in real time.
Growing from spalding’s years of study and experimentation around how to re-merge “jazz” music & dance, and Farrish’s multi-disciplinary work of transforming feeling, story, and humanity through dance, this is a unique first public sharing of their creative collaboration.
The ensemble of three musicians and three dancers has been in workshop throughout 2026, developing shared grammar and vocabulary to musically and movementally compose a story, engage in improvisational dialogue, and translate the vibrant energies, sensations, and ideas coursing between, within, and around them. Alchemizing and manifesting what could be, through and with one another…
Presented by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in partnership with Battery Park City Authority as part of the 2026 River To River Festival.

esperanza spalding is an eaabibacliitoti* artist, trained and initiated in the North American jazz lineage and tradition. Her work interweaves various combinations of instrumental music, improvisation, singing, composition, poetry, dance, therapeutic research, storytelling, teaching, restorative urban land & artist sanctuary custodianship, and growing in love as a daughter, sister, cousin, niece, auntie, great-auntie, friend.
She founded and serves as co-director of Prismid Sanctuary, a non-profit that creates and stewards restorative artist residency & workshop space in Portland, Oregon (Prismid.org).
With her dance project “Off Brand gOdds” and the Songwrights Apothecary Lab she leads multi-week performances, workshops, teaching, and therapeutic-arts research residencies. She is a 2024 recipient of the Doris Duke Foundation Artist Award and a 2016 Ford Foundation “Art of Change” Fellow.
*European-African ancestored being influenced by American cultures living in Indigenous Territories of Turtle Island

Photos by Rob Lewis.
