The 212 column revisits New York institutions that helped define cities, from old-fashioned restaurants to Unsung Dives.
Currently projected onto the walls of Artists Space, a nonprofit arts organization in Tribeca, are two Carolyn Lazard filmed by the 37-year-old artist inside the training center at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens. Disabled Lazard approaches his job as a “chronic patient” and says he often tackles the slow and boredom he experiences during his frequent medical visits with videos and installations. In one of the films, “Vital” (2025), performers Martine Syms and Cyrus Dunham play the mother and doctor during a fictional visit. Syms goes through a typical medical check-up move – she arrives at the front desk and scrolls worriedly through her phone in the waiting room – Cyrus, the usual obstetrician's last minute fill, is inspected. With a blank look, he shuts down the question after questions about Doulas and epidural, causing viewers to wonder if what we saw is truly a scene of care.
You may not expect to hear the fetal ultrasound slaps in the Art Gallery of Artist Space, an art gallery in downtown New York, but it is natural that it has been a blank slate of emerging and experimental practice for over 50 years. Since its founding in 1972, the organization has provided hundreds of artists, curators and artists with alternative platforms separate from traditional exhibitions such as museums and commercial galleries. Cindy Sherman worked there as an assistant. Laurie Anderson performed his early performances at the gallery. Nonprofits are also the hub of avant-garde music and political organisation. “I hope the space feels like (that) its name – it's like a container that has been refilled up to this point,” says Jay Sanders, the organization's executive director and chief curator.
Since 2019, the artist space has occupied the first floor and basement of its sixth home, the former carpet factory. The structure was undergoing multi-million dollar renovations, leaving the building's grand neoclassical façade intact, but cut a new front door into an alley along its side. Over the past few years, the surrounding neighborhood has grown into a prominent arts district, with dealers nearby such as David Zweiner and Hauser & Worth's pre-opening posts. However, when the artist's space first arrived downtown, the area was less developed. The artist had just begun moving to SoHo in the '60s and took over the spongy loft space left in the sky by textile makers. The gallery continued in the late 60s and early 70s. Dealer Paula Cooper, who defended the conceptual and minimalist artist, opened her space in 1968. Leo Castelli gave Roy Liechtenstein and Frank Stella his first solo exhibition, a gallerist who previously only operated on the Upper East Side, planted roots in the neighborhood in 1971.
It was in this transitional landscape that critic Irving Sandler and arts administrator Trudy Grace worked together to devise the Visual Arts Committee as part of the New York State Council of Arts pilot initiative. Their mission was simple. They had no gallery expressions and featured only artists who had never shown them in town before. The early exhibition, located on the third floor of the Soho Loft building, acted like a game from the Art World game, with Sandler invited each of the three famous artists to nominate another artist. In October 1973, concept artist Sol Lewitt chose sculptor Jonathan Borowsky for his second show in the Artist Space. These appeared along with the works of painters MacArthur Bignon and Mary Overling, appointed by Ronald Braden and Carl Andre.
Artist Robert Longo lived in Buffalo with his girlfriend, Sherman at the time. The couple ran through their own art space called Hall Walls under the loft they shared with several friends, and in 1976, Helen Weiner, then director of the Artist Space, later became the dealer for the shamans of Gallery Metro Pictures, and forced Har Wall to join the exchange show. Six artists related to Hallwalls featured their work in the Artist Space, while five artists selected by Hallwalls (such as performance artist Jack Goldstein and painter David Thurle) were featured in Hullwalls. Longo recalls hitchhiking from Buffalo to New York and sleeping inside the gallery while holding the exhibition. “The artist's space was like our clubhouse,” he says.
In the late 70s, two distinct but overlapping American art movements were established, thriving temporarily in the artist space, with no photographic production and waves. The photography generation, a crop of young artists (longo and shamans among them), who have turned critical attention to mass media culture by immersing themselves in television and magazine images, was launched with a 1977 show “Photos” curated by Douglas Climp. The following year, Longo and Hallwalls artist Michael Zwack held a five-day festival for No Wave Music, a particularly chaotic subgenre of punk that prioritizes rhythm and noise over melody. The movement was short-lived, but it was a brief moment when the worlds of visual arts, film and music came together. The festival was promoted in a flyer posted throughout the city listing participating bands that include teenage Jesus, Jerks, gynecologists and DNA. The event had no name and the admission fee was $3. Attended was Brian Eno, who had come to New York to work on a Talking Heads album. He later produced “No New York.” This is a compilation album featuring performance bands. The penultimate night of the festival was shortened when James Chance, the frontman of the distorted saxophone, jumped into the crowd and began a boxing fight with village music critic Robert Christgau.
The artist space functions as a nonprofit, so its curatorial team can “be pure in our vision,” says Sanders. That freedom allowed the organization to host several landmark shows over the years. For example, artist Jimmy Durham and critic Jan Fisher organized “Our People.” However, the organization's non-commercial status means that its programming has been under the microscope since its inception. One infamous conflict occurred in 1979, when the artist space unveiled an exhibition of abstract black and white charcoal paintings by white artist Donald Newman. In response, the coalition led by Linda Good Bryant, who ran the gallery just above Midtown, highlighting artists in colour, sent a letter to the artist's space staff who described the decision as “an incredible slap of the face.” Among the signatories were artists who included Hawardena Pindel and Faith Ringgold and critic Lucy Lipard. The New York State Arts Council, which provided 60% of the organization's funding at the time, received a letter claiming that its members' money had been misused to support offensive artwork.
At the height of the AIDS epidemic in 1989, another conflict came to mind at the exhibition “Witness: A group show that moved in 1984, curated by our Vanishing, Arting Our Vanishing, and Artists Space's West Broadway Gallery photographer Nan Goldin.” The National Fund for Politicians and Arts was particularly problematic in the section of the text that described the Catholic Church as a “walking sw house” and criticised Cardinal John O'Connor. The catalogue accounted for a third of the exhibition's funds.
Today, the future of public funding for the arts in the United States is uncertain. Earlier this year, the NEA imposed the requirement that it must grant the requirement to allow “promote gender ideology” in response to an executive order signed by President Donald Trump on the inauguration day. In March, the NEA suspended the requirement after filing a lawsuit alleging that the ACLU was infringing free speech. The president also signed an executive order in March, aimed at eliminating the museums and library services research labs, a key channel for federal arts funding, and in April the Trump administration would cut $65 million from the National Fund for the Humanities. Today, artist space receives most of the funds from private donors, but a small but essential portion of the budget (less than 10%) comes from public dollars.
Alternative spaces, such as artist spaces, are often accessible points of first contact for new ideas and new practices. For example, Lazard's show shows an important evolution of the artist's work. They studied experimental filmmaking at Bird College, so making “Vital” worked in the form of first experience working with actors on Lazard's film sets and in the form of storytelling for the first time. New York has changed dramatically since 1972. Many other notable alternative and non-commercial spaces have appeared over the years, and it has had long history, including the long-standing Metro Pictures, which closed in 2021. In Sanders's words, the organization's goals are the same as before. “Give artists the ability to realize their dream project on their own terms.”
