The Brooklyn Rail

Scribbled in marker on a postcard-size slip of paper in 1973, the anarchitect Gordon Matta-Clark wrote: “Making the right cut somewhere between the supports and collapse.”¹ His statement, or artistic adage, is deceptively simple. Upon further examination, it is an ethos emblematic of the intensely considered process Matta-Clark enacted onto Robert Moses-era New York structures. The tenor of Matta-Clark’s note is duly reflected in two recent New York building developments: the Whitney Independent Study Program space, now permanently housed at the newly renovated Roy and Dorothy Lichtenstein former studio and home, and the multidisciplinary fabrication facility, Powerhouse Arts, located in a converted early-twentieth-century power plant in Brooklyn.

Matta-Clark’s large-scale sculptural forms of interruptive “cuts” were excised voids that literally (and metaphorically) sliced through sites of urban blight—neglected or condemned buildings the city had lined up for demolition, later making way for the rampant gentrification and real estate speculation that continues today. His interventions were symbolic, temporary obtrusions to this spatial and social process of decay and razing. They spoke to a true reverence and curiosity for the city’s ever-changing landscape, probing questions around concepts of “seemingly established categories” like ownership, intended use, and permanence.²

These two sites, the Whitney/Lichtenstein Building and Powerhouse Arts, are distinctly significant for their contribution to the city’s landscape as major centers for art production—that is, one for thinking, and one for making—and are also preservative to New York’s structural history, too. The structures’ unique synchronization of art production and architecture has, until now, yet to be actualized to a scale this considered: compared to spaces like Dia Beacon or Pioneer Works (similarly, art sites built out from former industrial production sites), these structures have been relegated to somewhat stationary positions for art display. Conversely, then, the Whitney/Lichtenstein Building and Powerhouse Arts stand out as continuing their lineage of production in the sites they inhabit. They have established themselves as active agents in developing spaces of thought production and physical production, in turn weaving into the fabric of the city’s architectural landscape as well. Making that “right cut,” they straddle the line between history-preserving homage and establishing themselves as generative, forward-facing gestures for the art world at large.

This past year, the Whitney Independent Program—a pivotal pedagogic project for artists, curators, art historians, and critics in New York since its 1968 conception—moved into a permanent home in the historically significant Lichtenstein studio in the West Village. The space has been renovated by the firm Johnston Marklee, who were sought out by the Whitney for their relational and holistic urban design approach. “There is interesting tension and paradox in this design challenge and we hoped to make these different narratives and histories of past, present, and future uses visible and tangible in the design,” say architects Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee. “We wanted to preserve the sensibility and general use of spaces where it made sense, and be deliberate about the transformations of use and space” They explain that the renovated space—approved by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 2022—possesses a “dynamic equilibrium where each quadrant and floor of the building supports individual and collective actions … open and shared, yet private, workaday spaces for making that are also social meeting spaces, spaces that feel generous when one is alone and nurturing for a crowd.” Centrally, the architects add, these spaces are “less programmatically determined, but are architecturally specific.”

The historic building, a 112-year-old metal shop purchased by the Lichtensteins in 1987, has retained its unassuming exterior red brick facade and has three levels: on the first floor, Roy’s high-ceilinged, light-soaked office has been transformed into the program’s seminar room (what Johnston and Lee identify as the “heart of the program”) where fellows come together to meet weekly for group seminars. Adjacent to the central space are fourteen individual artists’ studios, divided from Lichtenstein’s cavernous, “factory-like, open plan” studio. The second-floor offers social gathering and lounge spaces as well as a kitchen, verdant rooftop garden, and quiet rooms for study and discussion. With the partial third floor, Johnston and Lee expanded a preexisting guest apartment into an artist-in-residence studio, “offering another kind of artist engagement within the walls of the building.” Central to their renovation was Johnston and Lee’s approach in rearticulating the space to accommodate this new era of the ISP under Gregg Bordowitz (the program’s newly appointed director) and Sara Nadal-Melsió (ISP Associate Director), while also preserving the building’s indelible legacy.

Bordowitz identifies the space as a contemplative site for theory and criticality, and one which reflects the program’s new structural developments. For the first time in the ISP’s fifty-six years, the program is entirely free for participants. “The increase in the physical plant has made me think about the institutional structure of the program,” which “signals a change in the ways we are supporting the fellows,” Borodowitz tells me. “We find ourselves at an interesting historical juncture, conceptually. The program right now is a very spacious and comfortable place, tuition free. I think of it as a house of study, and a refuge.” Centrally, the ISP further defines itself from other art production centers as it bears a distinctly non-competitive edge: fellows are under no imperative to produce, but rather encouraged to develop and deepen their practices alongside one another, surrounded by an immediate and diverse community of artists, writers, thinkers, and curators from across the world.

Nadal-Melsió explains that “one of the beautiful things about occupying a former home and studio of an artist is that it speaks to the collectivity of the program: what does it mean to make things together under one roof? We can have meals together, we can have an extended conversation. The socialization of the program and the social aspect of it is immensely intensified,” giving the ISP “an opportunity to experiment with different forms of collectivity that were not possible before, because there was no physical infrastructure.” This physicality, she adds, “has to be supported by an intellectual infrastructure that is also much more open to other forms of thinking and making art… the expansion is physical, but also intellectual.”

On the other side of the New York art coin is Powerhouse Arts: the Gowanus multidisciplinary fabrication facility—a kind of super art production center—which is housed in the former Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company’s central power station. Powerhouse Arts had its grand opening last May. In partnership with PBDW Architects, the firm Herzog & de Meuron oversaw the renovation of the sprawling, 170,000 square foot-space that includes industrial-grade facilities for metalwork, printmaking, ceramics, public art, and woodworking. These spaces are available for use by artists and other cultural institutions, as well as offering large event spaces, classrooms, exhibition spaces, and lecture halls. “We recognized that the project would require a strategic marriage of restoration and new intervention. When we first started work on the site, we were contending with the reality of a former turbine hall structure that was in an incredibly derelict state,” explains Philip Schmerbeck, the Associate and Studio Director for the US branch at Herzog & de Meuron. “Efforts were taken to test the load-bearing potential of the extant walls, the concrete slab foundation, and an extraordinary effort to remediate the brownfield site for the construction project at hand.” Centrally, Schmerbeck adds that the massive renovation project:

preserves a critical piece of architecture in the rapidly evolving neighborhood of Gowanus for industrial-use. From the red oxide cast-in-place concrete façade, to the exposed truss system, to the arched windows that echo those of the demolished boiler house, our design prioritized both industrial materials and the building’s new program as a factory for artistic production.

The development of Powerhouse Arts, one which balances the realms of preservation and renovation, speaks to its dedication to being a firmly New York-centric institution, and one that is directly shaped for artists here. Explaining this approach, Powerhouse president Eric Shiner says that “our ethos is very clear: we exist to support artists and creative expression. Our permanent home in Gowanus was designed to ensure that artists always have a safe and affordable place to make their work—or to have their work fabricated by our skilled teams—in the heart of this cultural capital”. “We recognize the fact that it is already a challenge to be an artist in New York City, and it is our hope that our workshops, programs, and facilities will make that a less cumbersome professional pursuit.” In what he describes as a “Kunsthalle-Factory,” Powerhouse Arts stands out as a vital and indispensable resource to produce artwork.

Of course, questions loom around the necessity of the creation for brand new art spaces in the city, versus the more relational architectural practice of working from within the framework of pre-existing urban structures. Not only will we witness the prospective efficacy of this model, but the immense scale of these two projects bear the potential for shifting what it even means to display art—specifically, one that exists within direct conversation with its spatially historical lineage. These two sites, the Whitney Independent Study Program and Powerhouse Arts, have thus proven vital additions to the New York art realm, providing ample resources for artists to both think and make.

1. Matta-Clark, Gordon. Making the right cut somewhere between the supports and collapse. 1973. Canadian Centre for Architecture. https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/search/details/collection/object/369441.
2. “Gordon Matta-Clark.” Whitney Museum of American Art. https://whitney.org/artists/3592.