PS122

The building was a public elementary school for the children of the immigrant East Village for close to a century. Then, in 1976, the city let it go, and the artists came soon after. Everyone was young and broke and making things out of nothing, which is the oldest art form New York has.

Then AIDS arrived. The school was one of the first places where artists answered it: with work, grief, each other. That was the tool kit.

Those types of conversations haven't stopped. The gallery still shows artists working through systems under pressure: climate, labor, migration, gender. It’s tenderness as a discipline and it never gets old.

PS122 Gallery is the exhibition arm of Painting Space 122, an artists' nonprofit that has run studios, residencies, and exhibitions here since the late 1970s. In 1979, Alan Parker shot parts of Fame here and left money toward renovations. A six-year renovation by TenBerke upgraded the gallery's space in 2018. The city owns the building, but the spirit belongs to the neighborhood.