学进去

Walking along her usual running way through Central Park and the Upper West Side in New York, Barbara Anderson, a teacher, felt the city had become worse. It was June, 2020. Many local shops had closed down and office workers stayed home. On Columbus Avenue, “there were at least two empty stores every block,” recalls Anderson.

Anderson decided to change these closed shops into art galleries (画廊). With the help of her daughter, a teacher and member of a local arts council, Anderson set up a non-profit organization, Art on the Ave, which aimed to exhibit and sell art to passersby. By November 2020, several stores on Columbus Avenue were filled with works by 41 artists.

Her project provides a chance for artists whose works aren’t shown in famous galleries. “Your typical art collector tends not to think about buying art in the street but there are many common people there, and they’re buying,” Anderson says.

So far the organization has worked with 130 artists in around 50 empty spaces across the city. Andrson sys that it has brought about $235,000 for 47 artists (an average of $5,000 each).

In expensive cities around the world, many artists are struggling to pay for studio space, find an agent (代理人) or get support from a gallery that will market and sell their work. Art on the Ave is one of several projects that have appeared to support creative artists with these challenges. Silver Art Projects, a non-profit organization, arranges art residencies in empty offices across New York. Art on the Underground, a public art program in London, has been asking leading artists to create works for the Tube since 2000.

Art on the Ave has headed underground to. Inside the Fulton Center, a shopping center and subway station in Manhattan, a former bakery has been turned into a studio for artists. “Bringing us into these spaces makes people’s life more colorful,” say Amir Diop, who recently exhibited his paintings there. “People are appreciating our art when waiting for their train instead of seeing a blank storefront with nothing in it,” he explains.