Museum as Hub

For its contribution to the consideration of the topic of “neighborhood,” the New Museum addresses its new location on the Bowery and what it means for a contemporary art institution to realize its mission of “New Art, New Ideas.” The New Museum’s project supports art that is not bound to the realization of objects and exhibitions and may instead be realized as discursive, ephemeral, or interactive projects. An exploration of the role of the contemporary art museum, the project aims to develop productive relationships with the public by using the real estate of the museum in innovative and informal ways. The project looks to consider the past, present, and future of the Bowery as a seedbed of culture and will be realized in three related parts.

1) Bowery Artist Tribute is a dynamic art history of the area featuring an interactive online map that illustrates the rich artistic legacy of the neighborhood through locations of artists’ studios and biographical information on artists who lived and worked in the area, as well as examples of artworks created on the Bowery. Central to the Bowery Artist Tribute is an ongoing effort to record oral histories of artists who have lived and worked along the Bowery and its outskirts and includes interviews with Carol LeWitt; poets Hettie Jones and Bob Holman; art historian Kellie Jones; and artists Vito Acconci, Lynda Benglis, David Diao, Inka Essenhigh, Charles Hinman, James Rosenquist, and Billy Sullivan. Committed to the idea of capturing the spirit of the Bowery as a locus of valuable cultural production, the project will grow over time to include more interviews, an updated timeline, art spaces and institutions, and information on over one hundred artists who have been living and working in the neighborhood over the past fifty years. Through onsite and online resources, publications, and public programming, the Bowery Artist Tribute is a vibrant connecting point for our visitors and neighbors to tap into the history of the neighborhood, its creative residents, and its contributions to contemporary culture.

2) The New Museum’s first Hub commission is Night School by Anton Vidokle. Night School at the New Museum is an art project in the form of a temporary school. Night School develops a productive relationship with contemporary art audiences by using the real estate of the museum to host a year-long program of seminars and workshops. Night School involves collaboration with approximately 40 artists, writers, theorists and a wide range of audiences for a period of one year. In the tradition of free universities, most of its events will be open to all those interested to take part in the activities in the city of New York at large. The main goals of the project are to develop a new methodology for a contemporary art institution by shifting emphasis from representation and display to actual practice and discussion, and to ultimately shape a different art public. Night School is comprised of eleven seminars organized around three thematic tracks. The program begins with seminars, workshops and film/video screenings conducted by Boris Groys (January), Martha Rosler (February) and Liam Gillick (March) that examine progressive cultural practices. During the spring and summer months, the focus of the program turns to artistic agency today, and includes seminars with Walid Raad & Jalal Toufic, Owkui Enwezor, Paul Chan, and Zhang Wei and Hu Fang. The fall program considers self-organization in the field of cultural production, presenting seminars and workshops with Rirkrit Tiravanija, Maria Lind, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, and Raqs Media Collective.*

3) Along with each of the Museum as Hub partner organizations, the New Museum participated in the introductory installation of the Museum as Hub space from December 1, 2007 to February 27, 2008. Martha Rosler’s, The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems (1974-5) introduces the Museum’s approach to “neighborhood” and contextualizes artists’ significant engagement with the area. The work offers a poetic, humorous, even elegaic interrogation of the concept of the Bowery as urban blight. Refusing the style of documentary or journalistic portraiture often used to personify poverty through the degraded human subject, Rosler concentrates instead on the evidence of an absence: empty liquor bottles and assorted detritus that suggest alcohol infused vagrancy and mark the passage of time. Juxtaposing these images with lists of synonyms for drunkenness or drunks and the words “dead soldiers, dead marines,” the work amplifies the void of representation while alluding to the unknowable path traversed by the so-called “Bowery bum.”

From September-October 2008 the New Museum presents its entire neighborhood project in the Museum as Hub space. Artists will be invited to present projects that engage the changing face of the Bowery and the New Museum’s potential role in affecting that change. Works will be derived from research in and about the Bowery and where possible, the process of developing these works will be documented and recorded on the Museum as Hub website. Artists invited to participate include Dave McKenzie, Lisa Sigal, Ginger Brooks Takahashi, and Anton Vidokle. The New Museum presentation is organized by Eungie Joo, Director & Curator of Education and Public Programs and Rya Conrad-Bradshaw, Museum as Hub Manager.

*Please note, all programs subject to change without notice.