Future Fund, Timeline

RADICAL INTENTION SETTING, OVERVIEW:

In 2022, PARTICIPANT INC celebrated its 20th Anniversary, foremost by inviting our community to join us as we began envisioning our future goals. Through the partnership of artists, we established the organization’s Future Fund, for the specific purposes of relocation, archiving, and planning.

By the end of 2023, together with the team of Büro Koray Duman Architects, we completed the renovation of our new home at 116 Elizabeth Street, including an on-site archival storage space within our exhibition space, which we consider a scale model for our future. As well, this stability strengthened our program and empowered us to engage foundation support, pivotal to our future.

Thanks to this generosity, led by artists, our vision to unite our exhibitions and estates programs is now a reality; and continued support enables us to fully utilize this space and time toward the deep planning and experimentation necessary to envision a more permanent home, a major step toward a sustainable future for PARTICIPANT INC.

RADICAL INTENTION SETTING, PHASE ONE:

While in the process of relocating in early 2023, PARTICIPANT reflected on our mission, augmenting it to include our estates work, and to further acknowledge the communities we serve. We refined our organizational values of depth, care, access, and sustainability; and amended our land acknowledgement to consider our digital platform.

Since reopening in January 2024, we've worked closely with our community of artists, collectives, performers, curators, and estates to realize our first year of pilot programming, integrating archival projects alongside the groundbreaking exhibitions and performances for which we’re more widely known.

This space and time has been made possible by the partnership of foundations who share our commitment to social justice, and by the generosity of artists who support our mission and programs. Their support has allowed for us to grow the PARTICIPANT team, also reflective of our deep commitment to artists and art workers.

Now fully immersed at 116 Elizabeth Street, the proximity of our Exhibitions and Estates work is being expressed through estate activations in collaboration with guest curators, local peer-organizations and libraries, and exhibiting institutions within and beyond the US. 

RADICAL INTENTION SETTING, PHASE TWO, TWO-YEAR STUDY:

Beginning in 2025, we plan to study the most mission-aligned ways to build the incentive and resource structures that a future home may necessitate. We recognize that our challenges will shift, necessitating invaluable opportunities to learn, unlearn, and, above all, to invite artists and our communities to collectively shape the organization's horizon. In that light, we have outlined the leadership priorities and core values including legacy planning and disability justice that will define our long-term goals, moving the organization closer to a more permanent home in Downtown Manhattan.

FUTURE FUND:

Now and always, our most significant individual support has come from artists, a commitment that, beyond just Board governance, has shaped the very identity of PARTICIPANT. Beginning in 2022, artist and former Board President Jacqueline Humphries generously made a foundational gift to launch PARTICIPANT’s Future Fund, which necessitated a period of Radical Intention Setting. She was joined by Josh Smith, who also generously supported the Future Fund with a leading gift.

Both Jacqueline and Josh’s history with PARTICIPANT run deep – Jacqueline was President from 2010 to 2020, guiding PARTICIPANT in the aftermath of our first relocation. Prior to her role at PARTICIPANT, she was a Board Member of Thread Waxing Space (1991–2001) and instrumental in establishing their first curatorial position, bringing Lia Gangitano to New York. Within Lia’s first season of programming at Thread Waxing Space, she exhibited Josh’s work. Both have remained friends and advisors ever since…

DEEPENING OUR MISSION:

Throughout this experimental period of Radical Intention Setting, PARTICIPANT remains unwavering in our mission, and endeavors to expand it. Uniting our Exhibitions and Estates programs under one roof has offered a picture of the promise our future holds, demonstrating that each facet of our work deeply informs the other, and further highlights the experimental work of artists and curators today. This moment is vital to our small organization as we strive to foster cultural transformation while providing research and care for prior experimental artistic practices, creating a repository of intergenerational memory, speaking to the future.

BRINGING TOGETHER OUR ESTATES and EXHIBITION PROGRAM:

Our prior collaborations with Alvin Baltrop Trust, Dash Snow Archive, and Greer Lankton Archives Museum have contributed to PARTICIPANT’s long-standing involvement with the Estates of Ellen Cantor, Chloe Dzubilo, Luther Price, and Lovett/Codagnone. Our new home furthers these commitments toward enhanced estate management and activation through dedicated storage, staging, and viewing areas.

Our aim is not only to facilitate the archiving and conservation of estates managed and housed by PARTICIPANT, but also to propose a self-sustaining model that enhances access to curators, scholars, and the public. Embedded in downtown New York City among the communities we serve, PARTICIPANT exemplifies what archivist Lisa Darms articulated as “a new paradigm [that] has been gaining ascendancy in the archives profession, inspired by decades of work by BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ and other minoritized communities. This approach focuses on supporting, serving, and learning from communities that preserve and activate their own legacies.”

ORGANIZATIONAL SELF CARE:

This phase is dedicated to the deep planning needed to strengthen as an organization, grow our modest team, and galvanize the generosity we will need to ultimately secure a more permanent home.

Having undergone deep infrastructural changes during Phase One, including investments in physical accessibility, estate storage, management, and care, in Phase Two PARTICIPANT needs tools to further invest in digitization and archiving under-supported artists’ work, re-envisioning our exhibition- and performance-making practices, and so much yet unknown.

TAKING RISKS:

This is a pivotal moment for PARTICIPANT. There is no greater work we can do for artists than to make space and time to envision a future that builds upon what we do best — amend history, construct alternative worlds, and reanimate legacies.

We’re enormously thankful for the meaningful support of artists, and hope you’ll join them in playing a leading role in PARTICIPANT's Future Fund.