ABOUT

MISSION & VISION

Founded in 1971 as an artist-driven collective, The Kitchen today reaffirms and expands upon its originating vision as a dynamic cultural institution that centers artists, prioritizes people, and puts process first. Programming in a kunsthalle model that brings together live performances, exhibition-making, and public programming under one roof, The Kitchen empowers its audiences and communities to think creatively and radically about what it means to shape a multivalent and sustainable future in art. The Kitchen seeks to cultivate and hold space for wild thought, risky play, and innovative and experimental making, encouraging artists and cultural workers alike to defy boundaries and sending them into the world to remake art history and catalyze creative change.

VALUES

QTPOCIA+ driven, centered, and celebrated.

We recognize that the avant-garde has always been shaped by intersectional identities; we hold space for intersectionality within our history and work as it arcs to the present day.

“Avant-garde” and “experimental” are never singular.

The avant-garde is not an exclusive club; it has many global missions and definitions and belongs to everyone.

Equity is care.

To experiment fearlessly, artists, cultural workers, and our communities all need care.

“Emergence” is durational.

There is no time-limit on being “emerging.” To emerge is to grow, and growth is an ongoing process, not limited to one generation or stage of life.

Thinking and feeling simultaneously is the future of art.

Upholding somatic labor alongside intellectual labor as equally contributing to creative care.

Rehearsal and process is speculative, world-building work.

The journey is where the joy is, teaching and learning are critical, and the “final product” is not the arrival point.

Artist archives are instructive.

Stewarding the care of artists and their legacies is crucial; we commit to remembering artists as our ancestors, and learning from their contributions across space and time.

Slowness is radical and kindness is a catalyst.

In the face of a world that too often conflates speed and progress, cultivating creative intentionality with tenderness can be transformative.

HISTORY

One of New York City’s oldest nonprofit alternative art centers, The Kitchen is dedicated to offering artists opportunities to create and present new work within, and across, the disciplines of dance, film, literature, music, theater, video, and visual art. The institution fosters a community of artists and audiences, offering artists the opportunity to create—and for audiences to engage with—work that pushes the boundaries of artistic disciplines and strengthens meaningful dialogues between the arts and larger culture.

The Kitchen was founded as an artist collective in 1971, by Woody and Steina Vasulka, and was formalized as a 501c3 in 1973. It has, from its infancy, been a space where experimental artists share progressive ideas with like-minded colleagues. It was among the very first American institutions to embrace the emerging fields of video and performance, while presenting visionary new work in established disciplines such as dance, music, literature, and film. This unique combination generated an environment immediately conducive to groundbreaking and cross-disciplinary exploration, helping to launch the careers of many artists who have defined the global avant-garde.

Among the artists who have presented significant work at The Kitchen are Muhal Richard Abrams, Laurie Anderson, ANOHNI, Robert Ashley, Charles Atlas, Kevin Beasley, Beastie Boys, Gretchen Bender, Dara Birnbaum, Anthony Braxton, John Cage, Lucinda Childs, Julius Eastman, Philip Glass, Leslie Hewitt, Darius James, Joan Jonas, Bill T. Jones, Devin Kenny, Simone Leigh, Ralph Lemon, George Lewis, Robert Longo, Robert Mapplethorpe, Sarah Michelson, Tere O’Connor, Okwui Okpokwasili, Nam June Paik, Charlemagne Palestine, Sondra Perry, Vernon Reid, Arthur Russell, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Spiegel, Talking Heads, Greg Tate, Cecil Taylor, Urban Bush Women, Danh Vō, Lawrence Weiner, Anicka Yi, and many more.

Timeline

Steina Vasulka in The Kitchen, second floor of the Mercer Arts Center, 240 Wooster Street. Date and photographer unknown.

June 1971–1973

The Kitchen was founded by video artists Steina and Woody Vasulka in the former kitchen of the Mercer Arts Center, located at 240 Mercer Street in Greenwich Village in New York City. Initially operating with fiscal sponsorship from Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), The Kitchen functioned from 1971 to 1973 as an artist collective under the name The Kitchen Center for Video and Music, with the Vasulkas, Rhys Chatham, Shridhar Bapat, and Dimitri Devyatkin acting as directors. The Kitchen’s earliest programs spanned live video performances, video screenings, electronic music concerts, festivals, and other interdisciplinary events. Notable events in the Mercer Street location included weekly open video screenings; concerts of visual music; the Women’s Video Festival and multimedia concerts presented by the collective [Red, White, Yellow, and Black] in 1972 and 1973; and the Computer Art Festival in 1973.

Interior view of The Kitchen's space at 484 Broome Street, c. 1975. Photo by Kathy Landman.

November 1973

By June 1973, due to various factors including rising rental costs, The Kitchen moved out of the Mercer Street Art Center in order to relocate to a stand-alone space. At this time, the organization split from EAI to incorporate as a freestanding nonprofit under the name Haleakala, Inc., with Robert Stearns—an arts administrator who previously worked at Paula Cooper Gallery—at the helm as the first Executive Director. In November 1973, the institution reopened in a new, expansive loft space on the second floor of 484 Broome Street (on the corner of Wooster Street) in SoHo.

Entrance to The Kitchen at 484 Broome Street, December 1978. ©1978, Patrick Hinely, Work/Play

1974–1985

During the Wooster Street loft years, The Kitchen continued growing its programming around music, video art, and performance, branching into presentation formats including exhibitions and radio and television broadcasts, and building an in-house collection and archive. In fall 1975, The Kitchen opened the Video Viewing Room as a space where visitors could play their own videos or to view those from The Kitchen’s growing collection and archive, which included videos made as artworks and recordings of past Kitchen events. In 1976, a cable TV line was installed at The Kitchen, introducing the service to the SoHo neighborhood and prompting the formation of Cable SoHo, a collaboration with other arts organizations to introduce video art to television audiences. In this time, The Kitchen was called The Kitchen Center for Video and Music. To more accurately reflect the interdisciplinary programming at the core of its mission, the institution began adding disciplines to its name. In 1978, following the formalization of the dance series Dancing in The Kitchen, The Kitchen became The Kitchen Center for Video, Music and Dance. Similarly, it added “Performance” to its name in 1981, and “Film” in 1983. Programming within each of the disciplines was organized by a specific staff curator, most of whom were practicing artists in their fields. In the 1980s, The Kitchen initiated notable programs that expanded its programming beyond its home in SoHo. For example, the organization established the Kitchen Touring program to present unique programs of artists and performers across disciplines at national and international venues, including a European tour in 1980, and a US tour in 1982, and premiered the first made-for-television artwork produced as part of the Kitchen Presents series in 1983.

Front page of calendar of programs at The Kitchen, 512 W 19th Street, January 1986.

1986–2005

Having outgrown its Wooster Street space, The Kitchen relocated to a three-story building at 512 West 19th Street in Chelsea in 1986 through an agreement with the owner of the building, the Dia Art Foundation. The inaugural season in the new location launched in January of that year with a two-night event called New Ice Nights, referring to the building’s original use as an ice house in the early 1900s. The following year, The Kitchen purchased 512 West 19th Street from Dia. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, The Kitchen continued presenting an ambitious program of interdisciplinary work while growing through new series and partnerships. For instance, The Kitchen formalized its literature series in 1989; opened Kitchenette, a video annex for changing exhibitions at the non-profit gallery Thread Waxing Space in SoHo in 1993; and in 1994 joined the international network Electronic Cafe International to produce multimedia performances using video teleconferencing. In 1996, The Kitchen published the catalog The Kitchen Video Collection: Two Decades of the Video Vanguard, edited by David Azarch—the first publication to showcase the hundreds of works of video art that were available to rent or purchase through its international video distribution program. Education and outreach became important pillars in The Kitchen’s programming in the 1990s, with the hiring of an Education and Outreach Director in 1998. That year, The Kitchen initiated an annual Street Fair and launched partnerships to offer theater and video art programs to students in local public schools, including Liberty High School Academy for Newcomers in Chelsea. In the summer of 1999, the institution initiated the Sidney Kahn Summer Institute, an intensive program for students and young artists to create multidisciplinary works and engage with The Kitchen's history. Additionally, throughout this period, The Kitchen prioritized mentorship and support of young artists, researchers, curators, and production staff by bringing more interns and fellows into the workforce.

The View from a Volcano: The Kitchen’s SoHo Years, 1971–1985, June 30–August 27, 2011. Curated by Debra Singer, Matthew Lyons, and Lumi Tan. Installation view, The Kitchen. Photo by David Allison.

2005–2019

In 2005, The Kitchen marked a shift in programming by adding gallery walls in what had previously been a black box space on the second floor of its West 19th Street building. This architectural addition inaugurated a new program of exhibitions on view with regular gallery hours throughout the year, bringing increased foot traffic from the gallery-going public in Chelsea. At this time, The Kitchen also adjusted its curatorial structure, moving away from having discipline-specific curators program within their respective areas to instead hiring curators who would organize programs across all disciplines. The Kitchen celebrated its 40th Anniversary in 2011 with the exhibition The View from a Volcano: The Kitchen’s SoHo Years, 1971–1985, the largest presentation of audiovisual and print materials from the institution’s archive to date. The following year, in October 2012, the Chelsea building sustained significant damage from flooding during Hurricane Sandy, prompting renovations and improvements to the first-floor performance space and lobby. Continuing The Kitchen’s commitment to Education, in 2012, The Kitchen introduced a new discursive program series, The Kitchen L.A.B. (Language, Art, Bodies), to draw out connections across the disciplines it presents centered around an annual term. After eight seasons, the L.A.B. format evolved in 2021 to become a yearlong research residency focused on the institution’s archive.

Niall Jones, A Work for Others, 2021. Performance view, Queenslab, February 13, 2021. Photo © Paula Court.

Fall 2019–Spring 2022

Beginning in fall 2019, The Kitchen’s programming evolved through partnerships with external organizations and through a shift toward longer-duration residencies. One such partnership was with Queenslab in Ridgewood, Queens, where The Kitchen hosted ten artists for residencies between winter 2019 and spring 2021. In March 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, The Kitchen shifted its programming online, launching The Kitchen OnScreen as a new platform for digital programming that July. Through new series including the online Video Viewing Room, Kitchen Magazine, Broadcast and various other livestream talks and performances, The Kitchen continues to support artists and bring experimental art to audiences around the world while in-person contact is limited. In fall 2021, coinciding with its fiftieth anniversary, The Kitchen announced plans to renovate its 19th Street building as part of a major capital campaign to support the next fifty-plus years of the institution. Before beginning renovation, The Kitchen returned to in-person programming at its 512 West 19th Street location in Chelsea from fall 2021 through spring 2022, staging a series of final exhibitions, performances, and residencies in the space.

Samora Pinderhughes: GRIEF, November 10, 2022—January 24, 2023. Installation view, The Kitchen at Westbeth. Photo by Walter Wlodarczyk.

Fall 2022–present

Renovations began on The Kitchen’s 512 West 19th Street building in the fall of 2022. At this time,The Kitchen moved into a satellite space at Westbeth Artists Housing at 163B Bank Street in the West Village. To inaugurate the “Without Walls” period of programming while renovation is underway, The Kitchen begins presenting performances and programs both at Westbeth and at other partner venues across the city.

SITE ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The Kitchen acknowledges that its site has shifted over time from Greenwich Village, where it began in Mercer Arts Center, to a loft in SoHo on Wooster Street, to its home on 19th Street in Chelsea that it’s held since 1986, and now to the temporary location of Westbeth Artists Housing as our building renovation is underway. Since its founding, The Kitchen has presented programming both within its sites and at partner venues around New York City. These sites traverse Indigenous space, Black space, Latinx space, working-class space, immigrant space, queer space, activist space, rebellion space. These diasporic histories have had deep impacts on avant-garde art production at large and The Kitchen's own experimental institutional work. We strive to bring light to these groundbreaking contributions as we carry this next chapter of our institution forward with care. This is a collaborative, thoughtful process taking place across all facets of our work here, and we look forward to continuing to create experimentation-forward space for all with these values as a guiding force.

Team

Leadership

Legacy Russell

Executive Director & Chief Curator