The Brooklyn Rail

Witnessing how much New York City has changed for artists brings an angering sadness. Heavens: Mars Bar is a TD Bank. Tompkins Square Park is filled with wealthy young people in blandly-hued sportswear. (The whole city is.) Artists are being shut out of being able to create, and survive, here.

I tried to count how many artistic-leaning friends I personally know who have fled in the past ten to fifteen years; about 70 percent of everyone I know from my first decade has left. I’ve sat over drinks and at countless dinners with dozens of friends tearfully saying they had to leave. It’s happened so often that my once dramatic and equally tearful reaction has gone stoic.

These conversations had been one on one. Now, larger ones are happening.

On January 26, less than twelve hours after a foot of snow fell on New York, over two hundred artists gathered at Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church to hold We the People: An Assembly of New York Artists. There were no keynote speakers; participants met with a vibrant selection of artists acting as moderators, offering everyone a chance to speak, town-hall style. Microphones floated and bounced about to passionate and dedicated artists. For three hours, there was no break, no lull in artists with something constructive to say, and there was no lack of passion from any one orator. The hall was full and loud in the best way.

For the second year in a row, Hunter College invited working artists to share their ideas for creating a more equitable arts landscape in New York City. The timing for this forum aligned with Zohran Mamdani’s tenure as mayor beginning, and the climate of our country being dialed up to “holy shit.” It has been a scary few years, which is not hyperbole—many speakers addressed the current political climate, as well as the years-long drag on surviving as an artist in New York City, once the place to go to be an artist. “Come here, try some cool and weird stuff out,” is what it used to mean to plop yourself uncomfortably here. This has changed.

January 26’s evening felt fresh and old-fashioned at the same time: a hall chock full of lively artists, reading statements before a like-minded and encouraging crowd, many leading with “First of all, I just wanna say how great this event is,” as they delved into their statements.

We are deep in the era of people working-from-home alone, so it was refreshing to be in a shared, communal space. The vibrancy came from the spread of ages and experiences in the hall—from first-year New York rookies to those who settled into the city in the 1970s.

I land smack-dab in the middle; one speaker referred to this demographic as “yelders,” aka young elders, which I am. Been here twenty-five years and have been a “multi-hyphenate” artist all of that time, though I’m now settled securely as a makeup artist in the film and TV world, saving me from nearly ten years of scraping by. I appreciated sitting in the middle of an artist’s experience after living as a passenger on the artistic struggle-bus of the early aughts—I lived in a squat for nearly two years, which some of the younger artists brought up with wistfulness. I thought, “Am I wistful for paying very very cheap rent to a very illegal landlord in a very illegal apartment? Or did that suck?” Nostalgia makes the past romantic, even if it did indeed suck.

What’s the point of nostalgia for those times when listening to dozens recount how terribly difficult it’s become to survive here? A little struggle is fine, which it was twenty years ago. It is nearly impossible now: rising rents, closing venues, disappearing government grants. It’s dumb and cruel (and boring) writing that New York is more keen on bankers and influencers than artists, but it still breaks my heart a few times a week.

American artists’ journeys are built on scarcity, with artists often creating their best work while expressing personal or cultural lack: longing, survival, and yearning for community to understand is often the point of the work. Society uses art as a mirror to understand the individual and cultural experience of being alive. But if New York City can’t hold and support its artists, then New York as we know it stops existing, which I see everywhere I turn: the city is full of chalk-outlines of dead artistic journeys.

It is clear most of the audience and speakers love the city and are grateful to live here. So what the hell can we do? Speakers all had solid, creative solutions, and with Mamdani in office, hope and possibility were present. Among the two topics most discussed: the cost of living and access to spaces for process and performance. Tiny bedrooms don’t count.

It is impossible to find affordable rehearsal/studio space, yet sweet heavens there is so much unused space! There are entire high-rises of empty offices and rooms, so why is any struggling artist paying a premium to rent space? I walk through the city and see empty storefronts: space! I work in production, so I spend days and nights wandering the halls of sets built inside empty office buildings: space!

The affordability and space issue go hand-in-hand. If your rent is 2,000 dollars per month, it’s hopeless trying to also rent space to work in. Then, if you have to work sixty hours a week to survive, how do you have time to make art?

Please, Mamdani and all those working at City Hall: artists need affordable or free space to draft, try, and make. Please, audiences: know that performances do not come out of thin air, that process is key to product. Please, federal government: stop cutting grants and limiting anything that looks like artistic expression.

Society needs art. Artists have had a duty to make New York dynamic, and New York has a duty to its artists. The most important need for now? Artists need a more affordable city, and individuals need funding and space.

Working-class artists voicing concerns and ideas into a full chamber was the best way to begin 2026. I have been hopeful, scared, and—with a new mayor in—am finding hope alongside my fellow working artists. Let’s have Mamdani continue to listen to the artists who are struggling. Let’s deal with the issues from the inside out, and let artists lead the way. Let’s continue to give the mic to homes like Hunter College and Danspace Project, who show that action begins with wise, vital, and full-voiced conversations.