Due to the threat of inclement weather,
Pug Day will be rescheduled. Please visit this site for updates.
This fun event pays homage to Alice Austen’s pug, Punch, and is in partnership with the
Pug Dog Club of Greater New York.
Come and enjoy the beautiful Alice Austen Park with your furry friends.
There will be plenty of pugs…and their enthusiastic owners stage a pug costume contest!
Everyone is invited to bring along their favorite pug pals to run around
the grounds and enjoy the day.
During 2021 and early 2022 Michelle Grabner collaborated with the Alice Austen House to create a new series of paintings and photographs inspired by the home, studio and collections of trailblazing photographer Alice Austen. Drawing on her own studio-focused practice and Austen’s photographic documentation of her home’s interior decoration and fabric collections, Grabner’s work re-examines fabric patterns and materiality in doily making, expanding on repetitive design and layering.
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“As an inventor, translator, copier and re-articulator of patterns, I predictably embrace Gombrich’s general observation that ‘the arrangement of elements according to similarity and difference and the enjoyment of repetition and symmetry extend from the string of beads to the layout of the page in front of the reader, and, of course, beyond to the rhythms of movement, speech and music, not to mention the structures of society and the systems of thought.’
When researching Alice Austen and her collections I was most taken with her negligible lace collection, a small box of snippets likely a practical assembly of remnants collected for mending Victorian collars and cuffs. Lace, like doilies and other domestic ornamental handiwork has varied craft and materials qualities but pattern invention is undemonstrative and mostly undeviating. Gombrich notes that decoration ‘changes slowly.’
Domestic ornamental work is practiced, produced and influenced by habit. Moreover domestic ornamental artifacts occupy habitual spaces, punctuating daily routine.
‘Radical invention is nonexistent, considerable invention the exception, and the gradual evolution of decorative motifs, some of which can be traced back for millenia, the rule.’
It is not for the lack of invention that compelled me to rearticulate and rearrange the excessively ornate patterns of lace and doilies but to challenge my aesthetic aversion to the white delicate complexity of lacework while at the same time pressing on painting’s suspicion of unoriginal abstractions. The works made for this exhibition seek to upend the Gombrichian pronouncement that ‘painting, like speaking, implicitly demands attention whether or not it receives it. Decoration cannot make this demand. It normally depends for its effect on the fluctuating attention we can spare while we scan our surroundings.’ “
– Michelle Grabner
At the beginning of 2021, cultural and preservation leaders met at the 9/11 Memorial Museum to discuss cultural institutions’ response to the 9/11 20th anniversary and plan arts programming to provide our communities with spaces to gather and reflect on the power of the arts in NYC to heal. The Alice Austen House presents 1977 Landmarks Commission photographs of historic Staten Island firehouses and a contemplative slideshow of all 5 boroughs to commemorate the heroic contributions of firefighters and their loved ones in response to the devastating tragedy on 9/11/2001.
All photos by
Jerry Spearman
Sam Abell, Alice Austen, Mack Cohen, Stephen Gill, Lonnie Graham, Justine Kurland, Lori Nix, Bill Owens, Sheron Rupp, Collier Schorr, Mike Slack
Sam Abell
Alice Austen
Mack Cohen
Stephen Gill
Lonnie Graham
Justine Kurland
Lori Nix
Bill Owens
Sheron Rupp
Collier Schorr
Mike Slack
Above: Collier Schorr, Arrangement #12 (Blumen) 2008
When photography was introduced to the public in 1939, it immediately began to displace the record-making function of other art forms, such as drawing and painting. At the time, photographs seemed to be a direct transcription of reality, precisely recording what was put in front of the camera or in contact with photographic materials. In creating these early transcriptions, it is not surprising that most photographers turned to gardens for inspiration. The earliest processes worked best when the photosensitive surface was fresh or still wet. They also required long exposures to an intense source of light. Thus, photographers engaged with subject matter found in their own backyards since those spaces were close to darkrooms, provided abundant light for their compositions and often contained botanical specimens that could be used to test the light sensitivity of the chemistry.
Contemporary photographers continue to call into question the human-nature relationship that these public and private spaces have inspired and create images that take the viewer on a journey. Careful looking reveals that the garden is not natural at all, human-made and that “paradise” requires caretakes to shape nature. When considered together, the photographs here illustrate the changing relationship between humans and nature from the nineteenth century to today. From private flowerbeds to sweeping public spaces, photographers have documented our ever-changing attitude toward the natural world.
Their history takes us from an agricultural society through industrialization and suburbanization to today’s global community engaged in discussions about past and present land use. A study of the garden could tell us as much about the gardener as it does about the beauty of blossoms and reveals as much about landscaping as it does about an individual’s relationship to nature. The difference is one of degree rather than kind.
PRODUCED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
The Aperture Foundation
FUNDED BY
Northfield Bank Foundation, the National Endowment of the Arts, and the Department of Cultural Affairs.
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Kelli Connell’s twenty-year project with one model represents an autobiographical questioning of sexuality and gender roles that shape the identity of the self in intimate relationships. The project explores polarities of identity such as the masculine and feminine psyche, the irrational and rational self, the exterior and interior self, and the motivated and resigned. By combining multiple photographic negatives of the same model in each image, the dualities of the self are defined by body language and clothing. The importance of these images lies in the representation of interior dilemmas portrayed as an external object: a photograph. Through these images, the audience is presented with “constructed realities”.
This year we are bolder than ever with a new signature can!
In 2019, we partnered with Flagship Brewery to create the limited-edition, Hibiscus-infused “Clear Comfort” Pilsner.
As part of Alice Austen House’s celebration of the 4th anniversary of our LGBTQ+ historic site designation, we are re-launching the Alice Austen House brew with a craft & beer event.
Come and celebrate this handcrafted offering at Flagship Brewery Saturday, June 5th from 1-4pm to kick off your Pride in style.
There will be friends, music, craft vendors and more.
Get your tickets or support our partnership and programs today!
We are thrilled to welcome the public back to the museum for booked and ticketed tours starting in March. The two contemporary galleries will be closed from March 5 through March 15 for the installation of our upcoming exhibition Radical Tenderness: Trans for Trans Portraiture.
We are only offering tours that are pre-booked via our online scheduling platform.
Alice Austen House
2 Hylan Blvd
Staten Island, NY 10305-2002
718-816-4506 | info@aliceausten.org
DIRECTIONS
Hours: Tuesday–Friday 12PM – 5PM
Saturday & Sunday 11AM-5PM
