GALAPAGOS ART SPACE RELOCATING FROM #NYC2DET & ANNOUNCES 2016 DETROIT BIENNIAL PLANS
Galapagos Art Space just announced that the Brooklyn-based performance and art venue is relocating from Williamsburg, now in DUMBO, Brooklyn, to Detroit.
Why Is Galapagos Moving to Detroit? According to their website:
Simply put, New York City has become too expensive to continue incubating young artists. The white-hot real estate market burning through affordable cultural habit is no longer a crisis, it’s a conclusion.
The canaries in New York City’s real estate gold mine and the basis population of its creative ecosystem – its young artists and thinkers – are no longer talking about the next show they hope to land. They’re talking about the next city they can land in once their current lease runs out. After nearly 7,500 programs and just over 1,000,000 audience members through our doors, Galapagos Art Space is moving to Detroit.
If the core competitiveness of the big apple is culture, but actually being an artist in New York City costs you a full time career in another industry, then the best and brightest – the ones our meritocracy would obviously miss the most – won’t allow their work to suffer just to be among our tall buildings.
They further explain,
Young artists around the country are giving up on New York City. Instead, they’re bouncing off the perceived costs of living here and traveling only as far as the urban density of their regional capitals. Cities like Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, Chapel Hill, Austin, Nashville and Philadelphia – all great cities in their own right – are not the national mixing chamber that New York City has been.
We think Detroit can be that place. To flourish, a well functioning creative ecosystem needs three things in abundance; time, space and people. Arguably, New York City has people but they no longer have time or space. Detroit has time and space and is gaining its critical third component – artists – at an astonishing rate.
In the end only one-thing matters: good artists and the best young thinkers follow ideas, and ideas flourish only when there is opportunity to realize them.
Not only have they announced their big move, but there is another announcement. In 2016, Kunsthalle Galapagos will present the founding edition of the Detroit Biennial in collaboration with local curators and galleries.
An ambitious survey of the new and important work being produced in Detroit, the Biennial will be focused on growing, nurturing and supporting local artists. In addition, it will provide an opportunity for people outside of Detroit to understand and contribute to the ambitious energy clearly evident in the city.
For almost fifteen years, post-wall Berlin, Germany, lost population as people voted with their feet and moved west. Only after art and culture made the city interesting to curators and collectors did the city begin gaining population. This outcome was aided by efforts of the German government to attract business and industry to the city, and In turn art and culture helped attract these industrial and business interests.
We see the Detroit Biennial as a way that allows us to apply our skill set to contribute and grow opportunity in Detroit.
– Robert Elmes, Executive Director, Galapagos Art Space
Here are some images of the locations they have secured in Detroit and Highland Park. See more images here.
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