A New Contemporary Art Space Opens on New York’s Governors Island, Complete With a Yoko Ono ‘Wish Tree’

This weekend marked the opening of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
Arts Center on Governors Island, the first permanent art space
to open on the former military base, which has become known over
the years for ambitious public art projects and events like
the Portal art fair.

At the center’s opening festivities last week, visitors
who braved the cold and misty ferry ride from
Manhattan disembarked just steps from a 19th-century munitions
warehouse that has been turned into an arts hub with galleries,
artists studios, an indoor cafe, and a performance space.

They then got a chance to participate in Yoko
Ono’s Wish Tree, writing down wishes on slips of
paper and tying them to the branches of a small tree, and to take
long-exposure light graffiti photographs with Olafur Eliasson’s
solar-powered lamp, Little Sun.

The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council has occupied a part of
the historic building for the past decade. But recently, “the board
decided it was time to renovate the entire 40,000 square feet, so
we’ve been working on that for the last year,” Lili Chopra,
the council’s executive director of artistic programs, told artnet
News at the center’s opening party.

Although Governors Island remains open only seasonally, from May
1 through the end of October, the council will offer
year-round studio space to its artists in residence. The inaugural
cohort of artists include Yto Barrada, Maya Kaminishi Jeffereis,
Brendan Kiely, Amy Khoshbin, Hilary Lorenz, Hypokrit Theatre
Company, Leah Raintree, and Michael Wang, among others.

“These residents will be here until November 2020, and we’ll
have dance studios for choreographers as well as a theater
program,” Chopra added.

Two of the artists, Barrada and Wang, also have exhibitions on
view in the newly opened galleries. Both artists “examine the
complex power dynamics of the natural world,” Chopra said. “Their
divergent approaches share an intense sensitivity that embraces the
root meaning of curation—to care, to look after, to support.”

Barrada’s exhibition, “The Power of Two Suns,” looks at human
responses to ecological disasters, and was inspired by her
birthplace, Tangiers, Morocco, and the sinking island of the same
name in Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay. Barrada also invited the local
New York artist known as Bettina to join the exhibition. Bettina is
showing the work that she’s made from her home in the Chelsea Hotel
since losing all of her art there in a 1966 fire.

In “Extinct in New York,”
Wang built four indoor greenhouses and planted a carefully
researched selection of lichens, algae, and other plants that
historically grew within the five boroughs of New York City but is
now gone. The artist is also showing watercolors of the plants,
based on pressings in the collection of the New York Botanical
Garden, as well as of the sites where they once grew.

Wang’s show, which debuted at the Fondazione Prada in Milan in 2017, is
presented in collaboration with the Swiss Institute, where samples of the
plants also grow on the roof terrace. And it seems likely that
other local institutions will get involved with future programming
at the center. “We’re all about creating strong partnerships with
other cultural organizations,” Chopra said.

Stay tuned for news about the center’s events in 2020, including
its plans in conjunction with the annual River to River Festival in late
June.

The galleries at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Arts
Center on Governors Island are open September 19–October 31, 2019,
Thursday–Sunday from 12 p.m.–5 p.m.

The post A New Contemporary Art Space Opens on New York’s
Governors Island, Complete With a Yoko Ono ‘Wish Tree’ appeared
first on artnet News.