LMCC's Arts Center at Governors Island - Coming in September 2019!
In September 2019, we will open the newly renovated LMCC's Arts Center at Governors Island.
LMCC's Arts Center at Governors Island is the first permanent home for artists and audiences on Governors Island, and the gateway to the island’s Historic District, home to a diverse range of arts, cultural and educational programming.
LMCC’s Arts Center at Governors Island will feature Artist Residency Programs with studio and presenting space for artists to develop their work, and a broad range of events to convene artists and the public in an exchange of ideas and creative practices.
2019 programming themes will focus on ecology, sustainability and resilience. Fall public programs include site-specific exhibitions by Yto Barrada and Michael Wang, plus Open Studios and related public events surrounding the Center’s signature Artist Residency programs and work developed in the space.
All events and programming are free, and all are welcome.
In its inaugural year, the Center will open to the public in September 2019 (exact date to be announced at a later date) through the end of October 2019. See below for major inaugural programming, with more to be announced in June.
Inaugural Exhibitions
YTO BARRADA
Much of Yto Barrada’s work springs from observing ordinary lives and marginal spaces in Tangier, Morocco, a city that sits at one end of the Strait of Gibraltar, where the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean meet. In this new project, organized around notions of insularity, disaster and human inventiveness, Barrada puts her hometown in relation with two other locations on the water: Governors Island in New York—where the show takes place—and Tangier, Virginia, a small island in the Chesapeake Bay.
Curated by Omar Berrada
MICHAEL WANG: EXTINCT IN NEW YORK
Extinct in New York is artist Michael Wang’s ongoing investigation of the boundaries of nature, nurture and human intervention. Over the past nine months, Wang has researched and nurtured a selection of species known historically from New York City that no longer exists in the wild. At LMCC’s Arts Center at Governors Island, young plants will be temporarily exhibited within a series of greenhouses. The exhibition space becomes an incubator—a life support system—for species that otherwise no longer have a home in the city.
Curated by Daniel Merritt, Swiss Institute
LMCC’S ARTS CENTER: 2019 ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE
LMCC's Arts Center is home to artist residency programs in which artists at various career stages explore themes of social practice, New York City Harbor and Governors Island history, the environment and climate change. More artists-in-residence will be announced later this year.
Nicole Awai
Yto Barrada
Colleen Billing
Baris Gokturk
Maya Kaminishi Jeffereis
Brendan Kiely
Amy Khoshbin
Hilary Lorenz
Jillian McDonald
Ander Mikalson
Lize Mogel
Aviva Rahmani
Leah Raintree
Aida Šehović
J. Soto
Aaron Suggs
Sam Van Aken
Asiya Wadud
Michael Wang
Hypokrit Theater Company
PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT PROGRAMS: TAKE CARE SERIES, beginning September 2019
LMCC will offer public engagement programs, including art-making workshops, talks, performances, building tours and artist-led tours, and open studios, among many other events and activities.
Take Care is a fall public series that furthers ideas presented in the Art Center’s inaugural art installations and reframes art curation as a mindful practice stemming from the concept of care.
Ecology, sustainability, diversity and the need to care for and protect one another and our planet are at the core of the series. Through events and participatory programs for all ages, Take Care offers audiences an opportunity to experience the art, explore one’s own creative potential and carry the work beyond the island.
ABOUT BUILDING 110 AND THE RENOVATION
Built in the 1870s as an ordnance warehouse and later used as military office space, LMCC has partnered with the Trust for Governors Island on the renovation to re-envision the space for the 21st century. The interior renovation, designed by PEI Cobb Freed & Partners and Adamson Associates Architects and engineered by BuroHappold Engineering, features 40,000 square feet of artist studios, galleries, performance and rehearsal spaces and a café.
SUPPORTERS
Leadership government supporters include the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the New York City Council, City Councilwoman Margaret Chin, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, the Mayor’s NYC AREA Fund, in partnership with the New York City Economic Development Corporation, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Leadership foundation supporters include Booth Ferris Foundation, Charina Endowment Fund, Ford Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, the Robert Lehman Foundation, Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), and the May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation.
Major corporate supporters include Adamson Associates Architects, American Express, BuroHappold Engineering, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, Davis Brody Bond, Gardiner & Theobald, Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, Goldman Sachs Gives, and Gensler. LMCC is grateful for the generosity of our Board of Directors throughout the year, and especially during this phase of growth for the organization.
LMCC also acknowledges the generosity of the individuals who have supported the project by making leadership gifts, including, Michael Ashworth, Kimberly Brown Blacklow, Dino Fusco, Timur Galen, Anne Goldrach, Francis Greenburger, Kevin Hoo, Meredith Kane, Richard Mines, Hans and Kate Morris, Peter Poulakakos, Brian Saluzzo, Craig Schwitter, David Solomon, and Jack and Suzy Wadsworth.
LMCC additionally acknowledges our partnership with the Trust for Governors Island.
LMCC's Arts Center at Governors Island - Press Release (PDF)