A new arts venue dedicated to video, sound, and performance art is set to open in Manhattan next year. The venue, named Canyon, will inhabit a 42,000-square-foot space on the Lower East Side. The project is the brainchild of veteran museum director Joe Thompson and financier Robert Rosenkranz.
Their vision is to create a nonprofit organization that upends the traditional museum experience to attract younger audiences. “The galleries will be equipped more like living rooms than a typical white box,” said Thompson, who led the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art for more than three decades. New Affiliates Architecture has been commissioned to design the space, which will include a restaurant, cafe, performance hall, and bars.
About half of the space will be reserved for galleries outfitted with state-of-the-art audiovisual technology, overseen by art conservator Cass Fino-Radin. Rosenkranz, whose foundation now owns the building, described the project as “venture philanthropy.” He plans to cover the initial construction costs of nearly $10 million and raise funds to support an annual budget of similar magnitude. Canyon aims to make art accessible, with free admission for school groups and through public libraries.
The project, announced on Friday, is eagerly anticipated by the art community, especially for its potential to re-energize the post-pandemic arts scene in Manhattan. “It’s not just a genre,” Rosenkranz said of time-based art.
Introducing the Canyon arts venue
“It’s a form of expression for a younger generation of artists, which is both natural for them, profoundly inventive, and engaging for their viewers.”
Thompson believes the hybrid space will address the changing appetites and habits of today’s visitors. “To me, there are several mysteries that Canyon will explore: on one hand, video infuses our daily lives, and yet video and other forms of art that take time, are often less visited in conventional museum spaces. And we know that many people—often younger audiences—are intrigued with immersive, all-encompassing ‘experiential art’ and yet many of those same people are not feeling at home in galleries, museums, and performing arts venues,” he said.
Canyon has already arrayed a staff of heavy hitters, including curator and writer Sam Ozer as curator-at-large. Rhizome, Electronic Arts Intermix, and the Archive of Contemporary Music have signed on as partners. Plans are in development for Canyon’s inaugural shows, as part of its strategy to stage three major exhibition cycles per year.
First up is a major retrospective of Ryoji Ikeda, the Japanese new media artist whose installations and projections have long fused light, sound, and data. The museum also plans to host “Worldbuilding,” curator Hans Ulrich Obrist’s sprawling show that traces the ongoing dialogue between art, gaming, and digital technologies. The latest iteration unpacks the impact of A.I. and interactivity on the fields.
“I hope that might engage entirely new audiences,” said Thompson. And what might keep those new audiences coming back to Canyon? “Good art, good food, good drinks…all at the same time, with family and friends,” he said, “in a warm and welcoming setting, in one of the greatest creative neighborhoods in the world.”
