Art in General Returns to New York After Five-Year Hiatus

Conversation Xiaoyu Weng Stephanie Bailey

Nearly five years after shuttering its Brooklyn space, New York nonprofit Art in General is back—without the bricks, but with a plan to support the ambitious experimental artists that once gave the city its creative lifeblood.

The first outing at YveYANG on 22 August will double as a fundraiser, with the gallery’s founder Yve Yang joining the board alongside digital strategist Jiajia Fei, artist Paul Pfeiffer, and curator-writer Jeanne Gerrity.

Leading the charge is curator Xiaoyu Weng, currently head of Singapore’s Tanoto Art Foundation and formerly at the Art Gallery of Ontario, who steps into the role with a mix of nostalgia and urgency.

In an interview with ARTnews, Weng credits board president Leslie Ruff for keeping the nonprofit’s legal status alive, ‘hoping that one day, someone would bring it back.’

That ‘someone’ now has to navigate a New York where more art spaces are closing than opening, young artists self-censor for fear of cancellation, and curators have fewer places to experiment outside commercial endorsement.

Founded in 1981, Art in General built a reputation as a launchpad for artists like Cecilia Vicuña, Emma Amos, Jill Magid, Sharon Hayes, Paul Pfeiffer, and the collective Postcommodity.

Long before it became an institutional mantra, Art in General foregrounded East Asian, Eastern European, Cuban, and Latin American artists, giving them visibility in the 1980s and ‘90s art scene.

Its closure in 2020, at the height of Covid, left a conspicuous hole in New York’s alternative art ecosystem. The organisation’s archives—documenting nearly four decades of exhibitions and programmes—are now held by the Smithsonian Archives of American Art. —[O]

Main image: Exhibition view: Aliza Shvarts, Purported, Art in General, New York (2020). Photo: Dario Lasagni.