Open House: Working In Brooklyn to Showcase Borough’s Leading Contemporary Artists April 16 through August 15, 2004, at the Brooklyn Museum of Art Exhibition to Celebrate Completion of New Front Entrance Pavilion Exhibition Press Release

To celebrate the April 2004 opening of its new front entrance pavilion and public plaza, designed by James Polshek Partnership architects, the Brooklyn Museum of Art will present an equally unprecedented exhibition, also a celebration, but of the creative renaissance now underway in Brooklyn, which is home to New York City’s greatest concentration of visual artists.

Open House: Working in Brooklyn, on view from April 16 through August 15, 2004, will be the largest, most comprehensive survey to date of artists working in Brooklyn. All of the works on view will have been made since 2000, so few will be familiar to visitors and most will be on view to the public for the first time.

Over 300 works in all contemporary art media by 200 Brooklyn artists will fill the two galleries in the Morris A. and Meyer Shapiro wing of the Museum and occupy other, less conventional locations as well. Other works will also be placed within the BMA’s permanent galleries.

This exhibition will place special emphasis on the multigenerational, multi-ethnic, and multinational artists communities that have breathed new life into such Brooklyn neighborhoods as Williamsburg, DUMBO, Red Hook, Greenpoint, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Sunset Park.

Artists began moving to Brooklyn in large numbers in the 1970s, attracted by the availability of affordable studio space. Galleries followed, opening first in Willamsburg in the 1980s and eventually spreading to other neighborhoods. Today, an estimated 5,000 artists and 50 galleries have transformed Brooklyn into the what is considered the most diverse and vibrant art scene in the United States and a mecca for some of the most talented artists on the international scene.

Expanding on its landmark series of exhibitions showcasing art from Brooklyn, also titled Working in Brooklyn, Open House: Working in Brooklyn is curated by Charlotta Kotik, Chair of the Museum’s Department of Contemporary Art, who has coordinated every one of the Museum’s Working in Brooklyn projects, and Tumelo Mosaka, the Department’s new Assistant Curator. Together they have considered the work of well over 1,000 artists and visited nearly as many studios, galleries, arid private collections.

Artists selected for the exhibition include long-established Brooklyn-based artists such as Vito Acconci, Louise Bourgeois, Rico Gatson, Martha Rosler, and Danny Simmons; widely admired mid-career artist like Terry Adkins, Steven Charles, Wenda Gu, Glen Ligon, and Roxy Paine; and such exciting newcomers as Haluk Akakçe, Rina Banerjee, David Baskin, Amy Cutler, Linda Ganjian, Louis Gispert, Jonathan Grassi, and Emily Jacir.

A number of exciting public programs, to be announced at a later date, will accompany the exhibition as will a full-color catalogue featuring brief biographies of the artists and an introductory essay by curators Charlotta Kotik and Tumelo Mosaka.

Editors Note: A complete list of the artists participating in Open House: Working in Brooklyn is included in the full press kit. The list and/or selected images are available upon request by calling the BMA Public Information Department or by sending an email to james.gordon©brooklynmuseum.org.