MoMA PS1 presents the fourth iteration of its landmark exhibition series, begun as a collaboration with The Museum of Modern Art in 2000. Recurring every five years, the exhibition has traditionally showcased the work of emerging artists living and working in the New York metropolitan area. Greater New York arrives in a city and art community that has changed significantly since the first version of the survey. With the rise of a robust commercial art market and the proliferation of art fairs, opportunities for younger artists in the city have grown alongside a burgeoning interest in artists who may have been overlooked in the art histories of their time. Concurrently, the city itself is being reshaped by a voracious real estate market that poses particular challenges to local artists. The speed of this change in recent years has stoked a nostalgia for earlier periods in New York—notably the 1970s and 1980s, and the experimental practices and attitudes that flourished in the city during those decades. Against this backdrop, Greater New York departs from the show’s traditional focus on youth, instead examining points of connection and tension between our desire for the new and nostalgia for that which it displaces.
Bringing together emerging and more established artists, the exhibition occupies MoMA PS1’s entire building with over 400 works by 157 artists, including programs of film and performance. Greater New York is co-organized by a team led by Peter Eleey, Curator and Associate Director of Exhibitions and Programs, MoMA PS1; and including art historian Douglas Crimp, University of Rochester; Thomas J. Lax, Associate Curator, Department of Media and Performance Art, MoMA; and Mia Locks, Assistant Curator, MoMA PS1.
Considering the “greater” aspect of its title in terms of both geography and time, Greater New York begins roughly with the moment when MoMA PS1 was founded in 1976 as an alternative venue that took advantage of disused real estate, reaching back to artists who engaged the margins of the city. Together, the works in the exhibition employ a heterogeneous range of aesthetic strategies, often emphatically representing the city’s inhabitants through forms of bold figuration, and foregrounding New York itself as a location of conflict and possibility.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Charlie Ahearn (b. 1951)+
John Ahearn (b. 1951)
Chantal Akerman (1950-2015)+
Sam Anderson (b. 1982)
Richard Artschwager (1923-2013)
Robert Ashley (1930-2014)*
Charles Atlas (b. 1949)
Lutz Bacher (born in the USA)
Fia Backström (b. 1970)
Alvin Baltrop (1948-2004)
Rina Banerjee (b. 1963)
Morgan Bassichis (b. 1983)*
Kevin Beasley (b. 1985)
Gina Beavers (b. 1974)
Gelsey Bell (b. 1982)*
Michael Bell-Smith (b. 1978)
Sadie Benning (b. 1973)
Huma Bhabha (b. 1962)
Dara Birnbaum (b. 1946)+
Mel Bochner (b. 1940) and Robert Moskowitz (b. 1935)+
Lizzie Borden (b. 1958)+
Robert Bordo (b. 1949)
Gregg Bordowitz (b. 1964)+
Liene Bosquê (b. 1980)
Amy Brener (b. 1982)
Ben Thorp Brown (b. 1983)
Rudy Burckhardt (1914-1999)+
Harry Burke (b. 1990)*
Scott Burton (1939-1989)
Abigail Child (b. 1948)+
Susan Cianciolo (b. 1969)
Shirley Clarke (1919-1997)+
Todd Colby (b. 1962)*
Roy Colmer (1935-2014)
Sara Cwynar (b. 1985)
Mira Dancy (b. 1979)
Jaime Davidovich (b. 1936)+
Jimmy DeSana (1950-1990)
Vivienne Dick (b. 1950)+
Andrew Durbin (b. 1989)*
Diego Echeverría (b. 1946)+
Terry Fox (1958-1981)+
Su Friedrich (b. 1954)+
Eckhaus Latta (founded 2011)
Mary Beth Edelson (b. 1933)
Gregory Edwards (b. 1981)
Joy Episalla (b. 1960)
Loretta Fahrenholz (b. 1981)
Ben Fama (b.1982)*
fierce pussy (founded 1991)
John Finneran (b. 1979)
Henry Flynt (b. 1940)
Jeffrey Gibson (b. 1972)
John Giorno (b. 1936)*
Ignacio González-Lang (b. 1975)
William Greaves (1926-2014)+
Jonah Groeneboer (b. 1978)*
Red Grooms (b. 1937)
David Grubbs (b. 1967)*
David Hammons (b. 1943)
Fanny Howe (b. 1940)*
Katherine Hubbard (b. 1981)
Peter Hutton (b. 1944)+
Elizabeth Jaeger (b. 1988)
Ken Jacobs (b. 1933)+
Paolo Javier (b. 1974)*
Joan Jonas (b. 1936)+
Jamian Juliano-Villani (b. 1987)
Angie Keefer (b. 1977)
Devin Kenny (b. 1987)
Eli Keszler (b. 1983)*
Christine Sun Kim (b. 1980)
KIOSK (founded 2005)
Manfred Kirchheimer (b. 1931)+
Ajay Kurian (b. 1984)
Robert Kushner (b. 1949)
M. Lamar (b. 1984)*
Louise Lawler (b. 1947)
Deana Lawson (b. 1979)
Sophia Le Fraga (b. 1990)*
Barry Le Va (b. 1941)
Okkyung Lee (b. 1975)*
Simone Leigh (b. 1968)
Zoe Leonard (b. 1961) and Nancy Brooks Brody (b. 1962)+
Glenn Ligon (b. 1960)
Tan Lin (b. 1957)*
Eric Mack (b. 1987)
Tony Matelli (b. 1971)
Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978)
Lionel Maunz (b. 1976)
Park McArthur (b. 1984)
Adam McEwen (b. 1965)
Marie Menken (1909-1970)+
Wardell Milan (b. 1978)
Ieva Misevičiūtė (b. 1982)*
Rashaun Mitchell (b. 1978) and Silas Riener (b. 1983)*
Yoshiaki Mochizuki (b. 1961)
Donald Moffett (b. 1955)
James Nares (b. 1953)
Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts - New York (founded 2011)
Raul de Nieves (b. 1983)
Véréna Paravel (b. 1971) and J.P. Sniadecki (b. 1979)+
Morgan Parker (b. 1987)*
Rebecca Patek (b. 1983)*
Sondra Perry (b. 1986)
Pharmakon (b. 1990)*
Howardena Pindell (b. 1943)
Seth Price (b. 1973)
Yvonne Rainer (b. 1934)+
Will Rawls (b. 1978)*
Nick Relph (b. 1979)
Joyce Robins (b. 1944)
Bunny Rogers (b. 1990)*
Ugo Rondinone (b. 1964)
Cameron Rowland (b. 1988)
Jen Rosenblit (b. 1983)*
Peter Saul (b. 1934)
Collier Schorr (b. 1963)
Nancy Shaver (b. 1946)
Judith Shea (b. 1948)
Gedi Sibony (b. 1973)
Hayley Silverman (b. 1986)
Charles Simonds (b. 1945)+
Lorna Simpson (b. 1960)
Rosalind Fox Solomon (b. 1930)
Jack Smith (1932-1989)+
Kiki Smith (b. 1954)
Greg Parma Smith (b. 1983)
Slow and Steady Wins the Race (founded 2001)
Nelson Sullivan (1948-1989)
Sergei Tcherepnin (b. 1981)
Third World Newsreel (founded 1967)+
Stewart Uoo (b. 1985)
Stefanie Victor (b. 1982)
William Villalongo (b. 1975)
Keith Fullerton Whitman (b. 1973)*
Sue Williams (b. 1954)
Lebbeus Woods (1940-2012)
Nathan Donavon Wooley (b. 1974)*
Geo Wyeth (b. 1984)*
Carrie Yamaoka (b. 1957)
C. Spencer Yeh (b. 1975)*
- Denotes participant in the Film Program
- Denotes participant in the Performance Program
CURATORIAL TEAM
Greater New York is co-organized by Peter Eleey, Curator and Associate Director of Exhibitions and Programs, MoMA PS1; Douglas Crimp, Fanny Knapp Allen Professor of Art History at the University of Rochester; Thomas J. Lax, Associate Curator of Media and Performance Art, The Museum of Modern Art; and Mia Locks, Assistant Curator, MoMA PS1.
The program of accompanying Sunday Sessions events is organized by Mark Beasley, Guest Curator, and Jenny Schlenzka, Associate Curator, MoMA PS1.
Peter Eleey joined MoMA PS1 as its Curator in 2010, and became Associate Director of Exhibitions and Programs in 2013. Eleey has organized 20 exhibitions at the museum, including premiere presentations of Ed Atkins, Darren Bader, and Matt Connors, as well as acclaimed surveys of Huma Bhabha, James Lee Byars, Simon Denny, Lara Favaretto, George Kuchar, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, and Maria Lassnig. Sturtevant: Double Trouble opened last fall at The Museum of Modern Art and traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. He also curated September 11, a group exhibition organized on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks in 2011, and oversaw MoMA PS1's expanded presentation of Mike Kelley in 2013, which was the largest solo exhibition in the institution’s history. Eleey previously served as a curator at the Walker Art Center and Creative Time.
Douglas Crimp is Fanny Knapp Allen Professor of Art History at the University of Rochester and the author of On the Museum’s Ruins, 1993; Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics, 2002; and “Our Kind of Movie”: The Films of Andy Warhol, 2012. Crimp was the curator of the Pictures exhibition at Artists Space, New York, in 1977 and an editor of October magazine from 1977 to 1990. With Lynne Cooke, he organized the exhibition Mixed Use, Manhattan: Photography and Related Practices 1970s to the Present for the Reina Sofía in Madrid in 2010. His forthcoming memoir Before Pictures will be co-published in 2016 by Dancing Foxes Press and the University of Chicago Press.
Thomas J. Lax is Associate Curator of Media and Performance Art at The Museum of Modern Art, where he recently organized Steffani Jemison: Promise Machine (2015). Other upcoming projects include Maria Hassabi: PLASTIC (2016); Projects 102: Neïl Beloufa (2016); and a publication on the work of Ralph Lemon (2016). Previously, he was Assistant Curator at The Studio Museum in Harlem, where he organized When the Stars Begin to Fall: Imagination and the American South (2014); Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art (2013), a traveling exhibition curated by Valerie Cassel Oliver; and Fore (2012), co-organized with Lauren Haynes and Naima J. Keith.
Mia Locks is Assistant Curator at MoMA PS1, where she has organized exhibitions including Math Bass: Off the Clock (2015); IM Heung-soon: Reincarnation (2015); Samara Golden: The Flat Side of the Knife (2014); and The Little Things Could Be Dearer (2014). Before joining MoMA PS1, Locks organized Cruising the Archive: Queer Art and Culture in Los Angeles, 1945-1980 (2012), with David Frantz, at ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives as part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time initiative. She previously worked at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), where she helped to organize Blues for Smoke (2012) and Bob Mizer and Tom of Finland (2013), both with Bennett Simpson.
Mark Beasley is a British curator and writer based in New York. He has served as a curator for Performa, working with artists including Florian Hecker, Ed Atkins, Tori Wranes, Frances Stark and Mark Leckey, Robert Ashley, Arto Lindsay and Mike Kelley. With Kelley, he curated the experimental music festival A Fantastic World Superimposed on Reality (2009) and at MoMA PS1 organized a series of performances in conjunction with the retrospective exhibition of his work in 2013. As a curator at Creative Time he organized This World & Nearer Ones (2009); Hey Hey Glossolalia: Exhibiting the Voice (2008); and Javier Tellez’s critically acclaimed film A Letter on the Blind (2008).
Jenny Schlenzka is Associate Curator at MoMA PS1, where she oversees live programs. She has commissioned projects by artists including Trajal Harrell, Ragnar Kjartansson, Marten Spångberg, and Anne Imhof, and organized MoMA PS1’s presentation of Retrospective by Xavier Le Roy (2014). From 2008-2012 she was Assistant Curator for Performance in the Department of Media and Performance Art at The Museum of Modern Art, where she co-organized the Performance Exhibition Series.
PUBLICATIONS
In conjunction with the exhibition, MoMA PS1 is publishing a series of Readers that will be released throughout the run of the exhibition. These short volumes revisit older histories of New York while also inviting speculation about its future, highlighting certain works in the exhibition and engaging a range of subjects including disco, performance anxiety, real estate, and newly unearthed historical documents. The series features contributions from Fia Backström, Mark Beasley, Gregg Bordowitz, Susan Cianciolo, Douglas Crimp, Catherine Damman, David Grubbs, Angie Keefer, Aidan Koch, Glenn Ligon, Gordon Matta-Clark, Claudia Rankine, Collier Schorr, and Sukhdev Sandhu, concluding with a round-table conversation with exhibition curators Peter Eleey, Douglas Crimp, Thomas J. Lax and Mia Locks. The series is edited by Jocelyn Miller, Curatorial Associate, MoMA PS1.
Greater New York is accompanied by a full schedule of films and performances throughout the run of the exhibition. Film Programs take place in the Cinema; Performance Programs take place in the VW Dome, 3rd Floor Main Gallery, and other locations as noted. Please check the events calendar for details.