EGN NEWS DESK
The Trust for Governors Island introduced on Tuesday that it has appointed Lauren Haynes as the brand new head curator and vp of arts and tradition for the 172-acre island, located in New York Harbor with ringside views of the Statue of Liberty, Lower Manhattan and the Brooklyn waterfront.
“We have large ambitions for the humanities program right here, which is to be New York’s pre-eminent public artwork vacation spot,” mentioned Clare Newman, the president and chief govt of the Trust, a nonprofit group created by the town to develop and function the island as a leisure and cultural useful resource.
“Lauren is excellent at bringing rising voices and underrepresented artists to the forefront and shares our concepts about rising the general public artwork program considerably,” mentioned Newman, who tapped Haynes, most lately the director of curatorial affairs and applications on the Queens Museum.
Originally utilized by the Lenape for searching and fishing, the island turned an Army base within the early nineteenth century, then was utilized by the Coast Guard within the late twentieth century and opened to the general public in 2005. Now ferries run recurrently from Lower Manhattan year-round and straight from Brooklyn in hotter months, with 931,000 journeys to the island final 12 months, in keeping with the Trust.
“We have incredible examples of public artwork all through the town, however what makes Governors Island distinctive is de facto our location and the truth that it’s an expertise to get right here,” Haynes mentioned. The concept of disconnecting from the town, whereas nonetheless seen, and reconnecting to nature on the island, she continued, “looks like the place the chance is.”
Haynes, 42, will construct on a half dozen everlasting and long-term public artworks by Rachel Whiteread, Mark Handforth, Sam Van Aken, Mark Dion, Sheila Berger and Shantell Martin which can be positioned across the island and beforehand stewarded by Meredith Johnson, the primary head curator on the Trust. Early this summer season, Jenny Kendler is creating “Other of Pearl,” an immersive set up evoking marine ecosystems within the subterranean areas of Fort Jay, on the northern a part of the island.
Haynes, who was born in Tennessee and raised in New York, mentioned that she didn’t develop up going to museums and hopes in her new position to be “in a position to make use of public artwork to make connections for audiences who perhaps really feel like ‘artwork’s not for me.’” The curator may even oversee the island’s Organizations in Residence initiative, which annually presents free area in its historic houses to greater than two dozen nonprofits from the 5 boroughs to host public cultural applications.
After learning artwork historical past at Oberlin College in Ohio, Haynes spent the primary decade of her profession on the Studio Museum in Harlem. Rising via the curatorial ranks, she championed artists together with Stanley Whitney and Ebony G. Patterson earlier than museums extra broadly had been committing to the work of Black artists.
Haynes then led the modern artwork program for 5 years at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark. Starting in 2021, she spent a 12 months on the Nasher Museum of Art in Durham, N.C., the place she was a co-organizer of “Lyle Ashton Harris: Our first and final love.” Haynes is bringing the exhibition to the Queens Museum, the place it opens in May.
At the Studio Museum, “you didn’t should show to anybody that artists of shade should be in museums and have exhibitions, it was a given,” Haynes mentioned. “I need to proceed that right here, the place I can have essentially the most influence and the place I may help inform these tales, to carry artists in and produce folks from all 5 boroughs.”
