Time-Based Art Venue CANYON to Open in Manhattan Next Year

New York Follow +

New York City will soon host a new home ‘immersive, long-form art experiences’, which American patron and co-founder Robert Rosenkranz called essential ‘in a world where most people engage with information, memory, and identity through screens’.

CANYON, a 40,000-square-foot non-profit institution dedicated to video, sound, performance, and durational art, will open in 2026 in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. 

Led by MASS MoCA founding director Joe Thompson, the purpose-built hybrid space—combining a museum, performing arts venue, and social hub—will display new media work in ‘multi-screen environments’ alongside sound-based installations, video art, and live performances.

Rosenkranz explained the gallery’s focus by saying video has become the natural language of rising generations.

‘Artists are using that language in profoundly inventive ways,’ the 82-year-old billionaire investor said, describing time-based art as not only a genre but ‘a frontline of cultural expression’.

Situated within a former commercial space readapted by architects New Affiliates Architecture, CANYON will span 18,000 square feet of galleries dedicated to video, alongside a 60-feet-tall skylit piazza with a restaurant and bars and a 300-seat performance hall. 

Thompson explained they wanted to create ‘a new kind of cultural and social space’, which beyond a focus on technical excellence and curation will prioritise ambience and hospitality in a way that makes exhibition spaces feel more like ‘a living room than white cube’.

Programming will feature three annual exhibition cycles, with planned shows like a Ryoji Ikeda retrospective and Worldbuilding, a gaming-themed exhibition curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist. 

A performance programme with artists like Carrie Mae Weems, William Kentridge, and Laurie Anderson will accompany the exhibitions. —[O]

Main image: CANYON rendering, New Affiliates. Exhibition view (clockwise): Ian Cheng, Rebecca Allen, LuYang, and Theo Triantafyllidis. © New Affiliates.​ Courtesy the artists and CANYON, New York.