On the 28th floor of the 4 World Trade Center, Tourmalijn, a multidisciplinary artist, works from a corner studio with two windows overlooking the 9/11 Memorial. Next door, another artist, Tariku Shiferaw, has his own space to paint and create installation art.
Both artists benefit from a non-profit program, Silver Art Projects, which offers artists free studio space in the chrome office tower for a year, as well as a $1,200 stipend and mentorship.
The nonprofit is part of a vast ecosystem of organizations and programs across New York that provide artists with places to work, a hallmark need for artists in a real estate market that has long forced them into hollow, defunct industrial spaces. to live where the rent is cheap and there is room for art as well as furniture. Until gentrification kicks in.
Other programs that provide artists with studio space include the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council – which hosts a nine-month studio residency program at 101 Greenwich Street for emerging artists and a newer three-month residency program on Governors Island.
BRIC offers rent-free 225-square-foot studio space for three months in the Brooklyn Cultural District. Chashama, a non-profit organization founded by Anita Durst 27 years ago, is working with property owners to convert unused spaces into art studios in all five boroughs.
“A lot of artists dream of coming to New York,” says Durst. “This just supports it. And then they’re priced, so if they have these spaces, they can stay.”
Not every program offers the surprising view of the studios of Silver Art, which was co-founded by Cory Silverstein, the grandson of the owner of 4 World Trade Center, Larry Silverstein. Cory Silverstein came up with the idea in 2018 together with Joshua Pulman, a college friend. Silverstein Properties will provide 50,000 square feet of space to the non-profit, which will then supply 28 artists’ studios ranging in size from 500 to 1,500 square feet.
“We had this idea of bringing artists in, shifting the paradigm of how artists have been pushed to the suburbs for the most part, in this almost centrifugal way,” Cory Silverstein said, “where people go to New Jersey and Brooklyn. and Queens and further and further away.”
The Silver Art program began with funding from major donors, such as the Ford Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies, and is now seeking to move forward by recruiting an Executive Director to support and expand that financial support.
The new director, John Hatfield, has worked in the non-profit art world for more than 25 years. From 2002 to 2004, Hatfield was assistant vice president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, focusing on the planning and selection process for September 11 commemorations. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, the city scrambled to envision what lower Manhattan would look like, reconstructing transportation and street layout. The cultural piece took a little longer, but the Silver Art program is key to revitalizing the neighborhood, he said.
Hatfield was also executive director of the Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens for nearly 10 years. Before that, he worked at the Nieuwe Museum for 17 years, of which 8 years as deputy director.
“Ultimately, this mission is about the artists,” Hatfield said in an interview. “And part of the job and role is to take Silver Art to the next level, really drawing attention to those artists. That is the core of everything.”
Silver Art’s current residencies include 25 artists, plus three mentors – Tourmaline, Hank Willis Thomas and Chella Man – who also have studio space.
The nonprofit has given promising artists the chance to expand their craft — and their canvases — beneath its 22-foot ceilings. After arriving at Silver Art, Tourmalijn had her first solo exhibition, ‘Pleasure Garden’. In June she exhibits at Art Basel.
Chase Hall, a current artist-in-residence working in painting and sculpture, was on Forbes’ 2021 art and style list “30 Under 30”. His work is in the permanent collection of the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Jared Owens, who also owns a Silver Arts studio this year, is a multidisciplinary artist who taught himself art over more than 18 years of incarceration. His work was showcased in “Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration” in MoMA PS1.
(Going forward, Silver Art will reserve up to five places per year in its residency program for artists previously incarcerated.)
Pulman said the program has been successful in helping secure gallery representation for most of the artists who entered it without the program.
“The ability to bring them into spaces and allow them to work together, there’s a huge demand and need for it,” Pulman said of the artists. “And attracting an Executive Director to us means we can support the work we’re already doing with his efforts and connections with foundations and donors.”
It is much more than the view that makes the location of Toermalijn’s studio space important to her. There is history here, she said, and not just the history captured at the 9/11 memorial. Nearby is the African Society for Mutual Relief, founded by Black New Yorkers in the early 1800s, which helped widows and orphans, paid funeral expenses for its members, and served as a real estate agency to buy real estate.
“It was a place where black people would gather in the midst of a truly immense hardship and dream of what they wanted and then move toward it,” Tourmaline said of the area. “And so it definitely feels emotionally charged, not just from maybe the past 20 years, but certainly the past hundreds of years.”
