Art Week NYC Names 32 Institutions for Inaugural November Event

By Tom Whitfield

Art Week NYC announced 32 participating institutions on Friday for its inaugural four-day run, November 11 through 14, across New York City. The event, launched this summer by ARTnews, Art in America and Artforum, will center on four gallery neighborhoods: Chelsea, the Lower East Side, Tribeca and the Upper East Side.

The roster includes heavyweight museums — the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Queens Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Brooklyn Museum and the Frick Collection — alongside nonprofits such as ArtTable, the Madison Square Park Conservancy and the Brooklyn Experimental Art Foundation.

That breadth is the pitch. Whether it coheres into an event rather than a calendar of existing programming is the open question. The announcement lists walking tours, artist talks and gallery openings but does not yet specify which institutions will mount new programming of their own.

What does the November 14 program include?

Saturday, November 14, brings a full day of public programming at the New Museum, Art Week NYC's main institutional partner. The New Museum and select other institutions are presented in partnership with Bloomberg Connects.

Artforum will stage five talks under the title "Art and the City" in the New Museum's theater, featuring artists, architects, filmmakers, critics and writers in conversation. Announced topics:

• The redesign of notable museum spaces across the city
• The growing movement of artists into filmmaking
• The economic conditions faced by artists working in New York
• The impact of machine intelligence on studio practice

The speaker list has not been published. That omission matters for an event asking audiences to plan four days around it.

What do city officials say?

City Council Speaker Julie Menin framed the event in civic terms. "New York City's world-renowned galleries and museums draw art lovers from all over the globe, but they belong first and foremost to the New Yorkers who live here," Menin said. "Art Week NYC opens the door for our city's own artists and art lovers to support and be inspired by the creative institutions in our own backyard. The success of our city's cultural sphere has always been built on the voices and hearts of New Yorkers, and this week gives more of them a way to take part."

The New York City Council appears on the participant list itself, an unusual arrangement that signals municipal backing — though no funding figures accompanied the announcement.

The full list

ADAA (Art Dealers Association of America); American Folk Art Museum; Americas Society; ArtTable; Asia Society Museum; Brooklyn Experimental Art Foundation; Brooklyn Museum; El Museo del Barrio; The FLAG Art Foundation; Fountain House Gallery; The Frick Collection; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; The High Line; The Immigrant Artist Biennial; International Center of Photography; The Jewish Museum; Madison Square Park Conservancy; M-ARCH PROJECTS; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; MTA Arts & Design; The Museum of the City of New York; New Museum; New York City Council; The New York Public Library; Powerhouse Arts; Queens Museum; Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian; Studio Museum in Harlem; Vilcek Foundation; White Columns; Whitney Museum of American Art; Williamsburg Biannual.

The first edition of Art Week NYC runs November 11–14. Names and dates are fixed; the detailed schedule, and the named speakers behind the "Art and the City" series, remain to be released.