As urban sociologist Robert Park wrote, the city is “man’s most consistent and on the whole, his most successful attempt to remake the world he lives in more after his heart’s desire.” However, how aware are we of our right to reinvent the city, and not just access what is presented to us? How much more creative and human-centered could we be when rethinking the processes of urbanization?

Posts tagged ‘Community Programs’
Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo: From “City of God” to Cities of People
Shadows and Selves: MoMA Collaborates with Midtown Community Court’s UPNEXT Program
UPNEXT is a comprehensive parenting program operating through Midtown Community Court that helps fathers to support their children both emotionally and financially. The UPNEXT program offers assistance to fathers who are struggling with unemployment and having difficulty paying child support; who are engaged in seeking custody of or visitation rights with their children; or are simply looking for ways to be more involved in their child’s life.
Art/Works: Exploring MoMA’s Community Partnership with Housing Works
For the past three years, Community & Access Programs teaching artist Kerry Downey has been teaming up with Housing Works (one of MoMA’s longest running Community Partnerships) to collaborate on nearly a dozen hands-on art projects. Traveling between three sites—the Keith D. Cylar House Health Center, the Transgender Transitional Housing Project (TTHP), and the West Village Health Center—Downey has been organizing video shoots, performances, murals, and a host of other artistic ventures.
YWCA Community Mural Project: The Video
This short video piece was created around the mural project I’ve been doing with YWCA’s Fresh Start program at Murry Bergtraum High School in lower Manhattan. (You can read more about the project in a previous blog post.) The program targets freshman students who are in academic trouble and finds new and interesting ways to get them involved in their school and excited about their educational career.
My Life in Museums: The Importance of Community Outreach and Teen Programs
Yesterday afternoon I was teaching printmaking to students at a nonsecure educational facility run by the Juvenile Justice Department, when one of the teens showed me what he was working on and said, “My work looks good, man. You should put it up in your museum.”
He meant it jokingly, the sort of statement teens make when they’re proud of themselves and overcome with a bit of adolescent bravado. But behind all of that was a clear yearning to be seen, for his hard work to be recognized. Today, his group visited the Museum for a guided tour, and I was able to hand them information on MoMA’s teen programs. I told them that if they wanted their art to hang here, a first step to take is signing up for one of our free classes. These students are being educated at their facility because, for whatever reason, mainstream education isn’t working for them. But I have utter faith that, high school dropout or honor roll student, rich or poor, attending teen programs at a museum will irrevocably alter their lives for the better. That isn’t hyperbole. It’s personal history.
The Masks We Wear: Identity, Art, and AIDS
When I took over the Community Outreach Coordinator position three years ago, Housing Works was the first organization that I reached out to and brought in as a new Community Partner. The largest community-based AIDS organization in the United States, for the past 20 years they have tackled the twin crises of HIV/AIDS and homelessness, offering housing, medical and mental health care, meals, job training, drug treatment, HIV prevention education, and social support to over 20,000 New York City residents.
Art in School in Prison: Isabel Rosado, Passages Academy & the Juvenile Justice Department

From left: Art room at Bridges Juvenile Detention Center; student work displayed in the hallway of the Detention Center
Bridges Juvenile Detention Center is a secure facility located in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx, surrounded by a strip of used auto-parts stores and wholesale supply outlets. It houses both boys and girls, although the two groups are kept at a far remove from one another, and it has all of the familiar trappings of your standard-issue television or film depiction of prison: guards, jumpsuits, concrete, barbed wire, and barred windows. But it also has an art room. And a library. And hallways full of drawings and paintings and poetry.
Things We Hold Close: Altars from the Women of Midtown Community Court’s WISE Program
Located just blocks away from The Museum of Modern Art, the WISE program at the Midtown Community Courthouse (MCC) is the only comprehensive initiative in New York City for women over the age of 21 who have been arrested for prostitution-related offenses. As victims of physical and sexual violence, exploitation and human trafficking, many of these women lack both the fortitude and the support that they need to escape the cycle of re-arrest and re-victimization. WISE (the name is an acronym for Women’s Independence, Safety, and Empowerment) provides this support through individual and group counseling, as well as by teaching financial literacy to promote economic self-sufficiency.
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