Artist-run Space - New York City

New York City

During the 1950s in Manhattan, artist-run co-ops became the alternative to the uptown Madison Avenue galleries that catered mostly to wealthy blue-chip and European art-oriented collectors. From the early 1950s to the early 1960s the Tenth Street galleries located mostly in the East Village in lower Manhattan became the proving ground for much of the contemporary art that achieved popularity and commercial success in the decades that followed. During the 1960s the Park Place Gallery became the first important contemporary gallery in SoHo. Park Place gallery was an artist-run cooperative that featured cutting-edge Geometric abstraction. Eventually by the 1970s SoHo became the new center for the New York art world as hundreds of commercial galleries opened in a sudden wave of artistic prosperity.

Pierogi 2000, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is run by artist Joe Amrhein. The gallery puts on traditional exhibitions and also presents works on paper in an extensive system of flat files. Viewers can look through hundreds of individual artists’ portfolios of works on paper contained within the flat file drawers. These files travel for exhibition at other venues in the United States and abroad.

Momenta Art is an artist-run nonprofit institution also in Williamsburg. Momenta Art shows work by emerging artists that are not well represented in commercial galleries. It has an annual fundraiser which is a benefit group exhibition and raffle. The fundraiser has been hosted regularly by White Columns, another non-profit organization dedicated to supporting emerging artists.

MINUS SPACE is an artist-run curatorial project devoted to reductive art. Minus Space maintains an exhibition space in Brooklyn and curates exhibitions at other venues nationally and internationally. Minus Space also has a location on the Internet enabling it to collaborate with other institutions. The website has a running log of related exhibitions and a chronology documenting the development of reductive and concept-based art.

Manhattan Graphics Center (MGC), located in the West Village, is run by artist volunteers and offers artists printmaking studios and classes. In a cooperative system artists can also use the facility in exchange for administrative work. Manhattan Graphics Center also exhibits the work of artists who have used the facility.