A community and artists collaboration 

The New York Center of Art™ will be a place for everyone to celebrate and be celebrated.

March 24, 2021 (revised October 9, 2022) –The New York Center of Art™ (‘NYCA’) will be a new hybrid model of art gallery and museum venue. Fundamentally, it dismisses as inadequate the operating models of the art gallery except one—to represent, protect, nurture, mentor, and favorably present artists and their work. Likewise, museum operating models are unsatisfactory save the commitment to provide, to a complete and global community, barrier-free access to exhibitions and programs that reveal and celebrate artistic accomplishment and its history throughout the past, present, and future. Finding a true example of such organizations that have fully succeeded in every way to fulfill the components identified above as acceptable, NYCA strives to deinstitutionalize the museum, gallery, and performing arts spaces and to act as architect for a new center of art that puts art in the center through creating a strong collaboration between community and artists of all genres.

The New York Center of Art™ will break the mold of current art gallery patterns, events, and behavior and cross the proverbial line of the historically defined relationship between art gallery and museum. This is imperative. Otherwise, we will fail to support and to honor those who share the stories of humanity—stories that belong to everyone and to everyone in the future who become their beneficiaries. Galleries, museums, and centers of the performing arts are responsible to safeguard and provide the opportunities (beyond revenues) that sustain a universal appreciation for those whose engagement with the creation of art has been under-appreciated throughout the majority of the history of humankind.

In ancient Greece, artists were considered no more than manual labor. In later centuries, the Latin word ars from where the word art is derived was defined as “technique” extended to convey a connotation of beauty, but it went no further. During the Middle Ages, the meaning of ‘artist’ would be associated with ‘craftsman’—someone whose work contained within it a particular refined skill and level of excellency much better than others. That artists were thinkers was not a perception that took form until the establishment of the Academies of Art in the 18th century. Unfortunately, the idea during the romantic period, which we seem to have inherited and not dismissed, about the poor and starving artist who must remain outside of society to fulfill a prophetic role, began its prevalence.

The term artist as we know and use it today is relatively new. The New York Center of Art™ acknowledges the multitude of disciplines that today’s artists practice, such as drawing, painting, sculpture, multimedia, new media, technology, filmmaking, acting, dancing, writing, photography, music, and the many additional forms of artistic expression that requires the use of imagination, talent, or skill to create what is experienced and interpreted to have an aesthetic value that includes revitalizing perception and imagination; causing intangible human experiences to become tangible; celebrating, honoring, acknowledging, observing, memorializing, documenting, evidencing, testifying, witnessing, monumentalizing, exposing, disclosing, awakening, and uncovering—fearlessly—all that is to be and know and understand of ourselves and all of our fellow humans being.

The New York Center of Art™ recognizes that the art community is failing in its advocacy and support if the median income of an artist in the United States is approximately $50,000 per year and that many artists work part-time as artists and hold a second job as their primary source of income. Internationally, this issue of fair compensation practice is bleaker, even in countries where actual legislation has been passed to protect artists, but where museums and other institutions often fail to comply. Almost everywhere, artists’ annual compensation from their artistic practice falls considerably below their respective country’s average median income, even in countries where, prior to the pandemic, there was a growing economic prosperity. What’s truly at risk for every nation is the economic activity that arts and culture generates within the very communities their activities impact. It is, in fact, a significant return on what little investment is made through public and private funding sources. The New York Center of Art is resolved to change the model of artist representation and the realities described above, so that artists are respected, assured increased and steady compensation, and whose time can be fully committed to their artistic practice, the outcome of which will be the creation of art of elevated quality and more meaningful in its impact on a global community.

 Presented here at https://www.nycenterofart.org is a dynamic and developing draft of the strategic plan New York Center of Art™ (a community and artists collaboration) to which all feedback is welcome. This plan presents an integrated model that addresses the needs of the two primary constituencies that the Center serves: its roster of artists-in-community and an all-inclusive and engaged local and global community. The Center’s core values and principles that weave through the overarching vision and mission unify like a Möbius the interdependent ethical and moral attitudes and behaviors that realize—with tenacity—inclusivity, diversity, equity, accessibility, and liberty.

The New York Center of Art™ will celebrate each and every day, the stories and artistic practice of every culture, of every race, of every life choice and orientation, religion and spiritual belief practice, life-partner choice or choices, all genders, every age from newborn to Guinness record holder, the-road-more- or the-road-less-traveled travelers, graduates and non-graduates, and those of every physical and mental stage of being and experience.

It is important to note that the Center considers the national observances and commemorative months as identified by governments to be divisive and exclusionary. While the center acknowledges the contributions and history of the pre-selected government-condoned stratifications of world citizens for these one-day or one-month periods, it also recognizes the inherent limited and deficient premise it establishes at the negligence of a myriad of other cultures and groups yet to be acknowledged in any formalized context. 

The Center chooses to celebrate everyone, every day and will engage both artists and the community to build and evolve its programming to fully represent the art historical contributions of all human cultures of the past, present, and future. The Center engages in program creation that explores the creative inspirations of artists from the absolute broadest possible spectrum, giving voice to both the creators and the public-at-large who engage with their stories.