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CHELSEA CONTRASTS

BIG SPACE, SMALL SPACE: A MUSEUM, A BOX

C helsea hosts galleries with a diversity of proportions.

The Cheslea Art Museum is a contemporary space about 30,000 square feet located in a renovated historic building in the heart of Chelsea on West 22nd Street, opposite the Chelsea Piers.

The Chelsea Art Museum is committed to an exploration of "art within a context." This approach favors a program of exhibitions that reflects contemporary human experience across a spectrum of cultural, social, environmental, and geographical contexts. The exhibitions are supported by a series of related cultural events and educational programs. Co-founder and president, Dorothea Keeser, describes the curatorial vision as, "a commitment to art as a living entity that reacts and interacts with us and changes the way one continues to live one's daily life."

In collaboration with a network of museums, galleries, and other visual arts institutions, the Chelsea Art Museum seeks to present important, but relatively unexplored dimensions of 20th and 21st century art. Its focus is upon artists that have been less exposed in the United States than in their home countries. The Chelsea Art Museum also places prominent importance on exhibiting young American artists. A new series entitled "Insight" features artists who have not yet enjoyed their own solo shows in a New York Museum. The museum presents film, performances, artist talks, and round-table discussions that look to foster cross culural and interdisciplinary debate.

"My work here allows me to really pursue fresh insights and push the thresholds of exhibition practice," said Manon Slome, Chief Curator for the Chelsea Art Museum, "Here I work with important societal themes, combine new and more well known artists in often unexpected ways."

Slome has been Chief Curator of the Chelsea Art Museum since its inauguration in November 2001. For several years prior, she worked as curator for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of New York. She is recipient of the Whitney Museum's Helena Rubenstein Foundation Curatorial Fellowship. As an independent curator, she has organized exhibitions in New York, London, Hong Kong, and has served as art advisor for private and public collections throughout the United States.

The museum is also home of the Jean Miotte Foundation, an organization dedi-

cated to archiving, preserving, presenting, and making available for exhibition the works of Jean Miotte. Rotating selections of Miotte's work are shown on a regular basis.

On the other hand, Chelsea continues to attract small, grass-roots galleries. A few blocks away from the Chelsea Art Museum, lies a much smaller gallery space about the size of a box called, White Box. The gallery offers an "alternative space" within Chelsea on West 26th Street. The non-profit organization shows contemporary art in the context

the show first hand inside the box. In the meantime, crowds stood and sat on the Chelsea street watching a performance art piece by dancers and listening to the entertaining voice of an opera singer before a band arrived to play inside the box with the exhibition later in the evening.

The exhibition was a multimedia sculpture installation and post-emotional habitat conjured by artists Jeremy Lovitt and Isac Sprachman. In their first collaboration, the artists exploit video and construction materials

of socially relevant issues and its vision is to act as a counter to the surrounding environment seeking to advance a creative difference. Exhibitions range from mid-career, emerging, and under represented artists with international programs from guest scholars and curators from around the world.

"The space at White Box in Chelsea is a creative alternative," said Juan Puntes, co-owner and founder of White Box.

A recent summer exhibition, APOCOCROPOLIS, curated by Jason Goodman at White Box, could be seen from the sidewalk through the window of White Box. The crowd waited in anticipation of viewing

to erect a monolith which salutes the notion that "enough is never enough" or "what have I done to deserve this?"

The materials of the monumental art-altar, metal studs and sheet rock, are the same materials used to create the temporary interior partitions so common of the buildings of the Chelsea art gallery district. Quick and cheap to erect, quick and cheap to tear down, and put in the dumpster with the ever shifting sands of the real estate market manipulations. The materials comment on the forcefully unavoidable cyclical migration of artistic centers at once regaling the viewer with a new sensation of archeological discovery.


	CHELSEA CONTRASTS BIG SPACE, SMALL SPACE: A MUSEUM, A BOX C helsea hosts galleries with a diversity of proportions. The Cheslea Art Museum is a contemporary space about 30,000 square feet located in a renovated historic building in the heart of Chelsea on West 22nd Street, opposite the Chelsea Piers. The Chelsea Art Museum is committed to an exploration of "art within a context." This approach favors a program of exhibitions that reflects contemporary human experience across a spectrum of cultural, social, environmental, and geographical contexts. The exhibitions are supported by a series of related cultural events and educational programs. Co-founder and president, Dorothea Keeser, describes the curatorial vision as, "a commitment to art as a living entity that reacts and interacts with us and changes the way one continues to live one's daily life." In collaboration with a network of museums, galleries, and other visual arts institutions, the Chelsea Art Museum seeks to present important, but relatively unexplored dimensions of 20th and 21st century art. Its focus is upon artists that have been less exposed in the United States than in their home countries. The Chelsea Art Museum also places prominent importance on exhibiting young American artists. A new series entitled "Insight" features artists who have not yet enjoyed their own solo shows in a New York Museum. The museum presents film, performances, artist talks, and round-table discussions that look to foster cross culural and interdisciplinary debate. "My work here allows me to really pursue fresh insights and push the thresholds of exhibition practice," said Manon Slome, Chief Curator for the Chelsea Art Museum, "Here I work with important societal themes, combine new and more well known artists in often unexpected ways." Slome has been Chief Curator of the Chelsea Art Museum since its inauguration in November 2001. For several years prior, she worked as curator for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of New York. She is recipient of the Whitney Museum's Helena Rubenstein Foundation Curatorial Fellowship. As an independent curator, she has organized exhibitions in New York, London, Hong Kong, and has served as art advisor for private and public collections throughout the United States. The museum is also home of the Jean Miotte Foundation, an organization dedi- cated to archiving, preserving, presenting, and making available for exhibition the works of Jean Miotte. Rotating selections of Miotte's work are shown on a regular basis. On the other hand, Chelsea continues to attract small, grass-roots galleries. A few blocks away from the Chelsea Art Museum, lies a much smaller gallery space about the size of a box called, White Box. The gallery offers an "alternative space" within Chelsea on West 26th Street. The non-profit organization shows contemporary art in the context the show first hand inside the box. In the meantime, crowds stood and sat on the Chelsea street watching a performance art piece by dancers and listening to the entertaining voice of an opera singer before a band arrived to play inside the box with the exhibition later in the evening. The exhibition was a multimedia sculpture installation and post-emotional habitat conjured by artists Jeremy Lovitt and Isac Sprachman. In their first collaboration, the artists exploit video and construction materials of socially relevant issues and its vision is to act as a counter to the surrounding environment seeking to advance a creative difference. Exhibitions range from mid-career, emerging, and under represented artists with international programs from guest scholars and curators from around the world. "The space at White Box in Chelsea is a creative alternative," said Juan Puntes, co-owner and founder of White Box. A recent summer exhibition, APOCOCROPOLIS, curated by Jason Goodman at White Box, could be seen from the sidewalk through the window of White Box. The crowd waited in anticipation of viewing to erect a monolith which salutes the notion that "enough is never enough" or "what have I done to deserve this?" The materials of the monumental art-altar, metal studs and sheet rock, are the same materials used to create the temporary interior partitions so common of the buildings of the Chelsea art gallery district. Quick and cheap to erect, quick and cheap to tear down, and put in the dumpster with the ever shifting sands of the real estate market manipulations. The materials comment on the forcefully unavoidable cyclical migration of artistic centers at once regaling the viewer with a new sensation of archeological discovery.