The Arts Center at Governors Island is now closed!
Thank you for visiting us during our 2023 public season. We look forward to welcoming you back next year with an exciting lineup of programs and exhibitions! Did you know that The Arts Center at Governors Island is home to working artists all year round? Learn more about our current cohort of artists and The Arts Center Residency here.
Exhibitions at The Arts Center explored a range of ideas and media with an emphasis on site-specific projects that took the Art Center's unique location into consideration. Special events took place throughout the Summer in conjunction with each of three annual exhibitions, including artist talks, workshops, and The Take Care Series.
The 2023 exhibition season took inspiration from LMCC's long history as a supporter of the arts through the theme of the passage of time. Each exhibition offered different perspectives on the ways in which artists responded to ideas about time, such as personal history, the legacies of activism, objects we collected, intergenerational relationships, and more.
Where Time Runs Backwards
by Daniel Shieh
With Chia-Lun Chang and Arleene Correa Valencia
Upper Gallery at The Arts Center at Governors Island
Where Time Runs Backwards is a multimedia exhibition featuring five new site-specific works by Taiwanese-born artist Daniel Shieh. Shieh’s work will be paired with the poetry of Chia-Lun Chang—recipient of LMCC’s 2022 Sarah Verdone Writing Award—and textile works by Arleene Correa Valencia. All three artists draw upon conversations with their parents about aspirations for their children and what becoming American entails. The title Where Time Runs Backwards refers to the artists' means of self-determination—endlessly retracing the past decisions of their families in order to make sense of their future.
ANTI•VENOM
Presented by Allies in Arts
Lower Gallery at The Arts Center at Governors Island
Supporting artists across disciplines, The Arts Center’s Lower Gallery will once again be devoted to film, through a new partnership with Allies in Arts, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting artists who identify as women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+. In partnership with LMCC, Allies in Arts has curated an exhibition of films and videos celebrating the progress of artists fighting for the liberation of women, BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and other marginalized groups over the last half-century.
Artists Featured: Amelia Winger-Bearskin, Andrew Thomas Huang, Le’Andra LeSeur, Anna Parisi, Jacolby Satterwhite, Corinne Spencer, and Joaquin Trujillo.
there is nothing you can think that is not the moon | The Museum of Lost Things
by Rhonda Weppler and Trevor Mahovsky
The Café at The Arts Center at Governors Island
there is nothing you can think that is not the moon|The Museum of Lost Things is a site-specific installation by collaborative duo Rhonda Weppler and Trevor Mahovsky will transform during the exhibition. The black shed currently houses a collection of glowing replicas of antique and vintage objects, originally gathered for the artists’ ongoing public art project, which has previously been staged as a life-scale mock thrift store on the streets of Washington, Toronto, and Orebro (Sweden). Each object is created in the form of a handmade lantern, assembled from photographs of objects collected and intensively documented by the artists. They are lit in changing patterns that organize the collection into categories such as type and city of origin.
On September 3, the installation was transformed into The Museum of Lost Things. The lanterns that once adorned the space were given away to the public and have been replaced by lanterns created by workshop participants and visitors throughout the summer. These lanterns are small time capsules filled with memories, each replicating objects they have lost or given away.
2023
Daniel Shieh with Chia-Lun Chang and Arleene Correa Valencia:
Where Time Runs Backwards
Where Time Runs Backwards is a multimedia exhibition featuring five new site-specific works by Taiwanese-born artist Daniel Shieh. Shieh’s work will be paired with the poetry of Chia-Lun Chang—recipient of LMCC’s 2022 Sarah Verdone Writing Award—and textile works by Arleene Correa Valencia. All three artists draw upon conversations with their parents about aspirations for their children and what becoming American entails. The title Where Time Runs Backwards refers to the artists' means of self-determination—endlessly retracing the past decisions of their families in order to make sense of their future.
2022
Amy Khoshbin and Jennifer Khoshbin:
Sun Seekers
Sun Seekers, created by sisters Amy Khoshbin and Jennifer Khoshbin, is a body of immersive installation, sculptural, and performance work meant to promote healing through disconnecting with technology and reconnecting with the natural world.
Elissa Blount-Moorhead and Bradford Young:
Back and Song
Back and Song is a meditative four-channel film and art installation that reflects on how the pursuit of health is at the root of how life, breath, joy, and pain manifest in black experience from cradle to grave. The kaleidoscopic installation considers the labor and care provided by generations of black healers—doctors, nurses, midwives, morticians, therapists, and health aides—and their histories of contribution to and resistance from the flawed and discriminatory structures of Western medicine.
Simon Benjamin:
Pillars
LMCC proudly presented the first U.S.-based installation of Pillars by Jamaican-born artist Simon Benjamin. A new iteration of Diorama, an interactive video and installation work first exhibited at the 2017 Ghetto Biennale in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Pillars continues Benjamin’s investigation into people of the African Diaspora and their evolving relationship with the sea.
2021
Onyedika Chuke:
The Forever Museum Archive_Circa 6000BCE
Presented in partnership with Pioneer Works
Curated by Gabriel Florenz
Part of an ongoing project that mines connections between history, archive, knowledge production and power, this iteration is focused on the US carceral system - its starting point and evolution.
2021 Participatory Project
Muna Malik:
Blessing of the Boats
We have an opportunity to set sail towards a new future. What society would you build and how do we get there?
Through active engagement and participation, this work asks the viewer to think about the society they would like to live within and how they might take steps to help shift it in that direction.
2019
Michael Wang:
Extinct in New York
The gallery becomes a greenhouse, a sanctuary of care, and a time capsule for the city's extinct flora in Michael Wang's reverent Extinct in New York.
Yto Barrada with guest artist Bettina:
The Power of Two Suns
Yto Barrada with guest artist Bettina reflects on our individual and collective reactions to the onset of disaster– can solace be found in the power of solidarity?
Through documentary abstraction channeled through clear lines, simple shapes and reduced palette, Yto Barrada with guest artist Bettina imagine a quieter beginning.
2019 Participatory Project
Yoko Ono:
Wish Trees
Situated at the entrance of the Arts Center, Yoko Ono's participatory project, Wish Trees was Ono’s open invitation to viewers to write their wishes on small tags and then hang them on a live tree–creating a living monument to all dreams, big and small.