When Powerhouse Arts finished renovating its Gowanus warehouse in 2023, it was heralded as a world-class hub for fabricators, printmakers, and ceramicists to make large-scale artworks without needing to leave the city.
Now the nonprofit arts organization has made even more ambitious plans to turn the 170,000-square-foot (~15,794 m) former transit power station into an exhibition space and performance venue rivaling the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Park Avenue Armory.
This fall, Powerhouse launched a new performing arts festival on its spacious third floor, headlined by artist William Kentridge’s contemporary opera Sybil (2019). The lineup, which runs through December, includes works by choreographers Hofesh Shechter and Christos Papadopoulos, and a performance by Carolina Bianchi Y Cara de Cavalo. This is paired with an interactive visual art installation by artist Kate McIntosh, which provides the tools for audience members to take artmaking into their own hands, including tools and safety goggles.
Powerhouse Arts president Eric Shiner hoped the festival would demonstrate that the institution can serve as a home for artists and uplift the public during a dark time.
“Everything that we do here is in support of artists and making sure that artists not only have the space, but the time and the resources to make their artistic dreams come true,” he told the festival’s gala attendees on Thursday.
The art world appears to be taking notice. The festival’s benefactors include a long list of in-demand artists, including Amy Sherald, Shamel Pitts, and Miles Greenberg. Goodman Gallery and Hauser & Wirth, the latter of which has collaborated with Powerhouse’s printmaking studio to make less-expensive artist editions for exhibitions, have signed on too.
Other programs could become annual traditions. Powerhouse’s master printmaker Luther Davis established a printmaking fair in March, and the nonprofit hosted Conductor, an art fair featuring work by Brazilian, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Palestinian, and Indonesian-Thai artists in May. Both events are scheduled to return next year.
The nonprofit has leaned heavily into performance, dance, and printmaking this year. But two recent hires, including Diya Vij, a curator at Creative Time who will serve as vice president of curatorial and arts programs, and Brittni Collins, the director of public art, signal that Powerhouse plans to substantially expand its visual art exhibitions and public programs. Next week, it will welcome three New York-based artists, Grace Lynne Haynes, Nazanin Noroozi, and Ngozi Olojede, as its inaugural resident artists.
Alma Communications founder Hannah Gottlieb-Graham became familiar with Powerhouse when they commissioned Greenberg, her client, to conceive a durational performance for the nonprofit’s grand opening in May 2023. For seven hours, Greenberg and his performers rotated between pedestals and a manmade orange pond, wielding swords like avatars in a video game.
“Any time you unveil a performance space, the first performance you do sets the stage for things,” she said, explaining that Powerhouse has since featured performance artists and theater in subsequent programs.
Gottlieb-Graham, who has since become a PHA benefactor, said she was curious to see how the staff blends experiential exhibitions and traditional visual arts shows within the building’s vast third floor, where graffiti from the 1970s and 1980s has been preserved on its walls.
“To me, there’s nothing like it aesthetically in the city,” she said. “It has a real sense of personality.”
