Mission

Emerging from the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis in post-9/11 New York City and informed by the unresolved histories of the alternative space movement, PARTICIPANT INC is an educational corporation and not-for-profit art space engaging communities through in-depth artist collaborations, exhibitions, performances, and estates work as radical acts of care. PARTICIPANT supports generative curatorial and critical practices made through the lens of social, racial, and environmental justice and centers LGBTQIA2S+, BIPOC, disabled, and low-income artists. We foster expanding definitions of diversity, access, and service to artists’ legacies.

Values

DEPTH: We understand depth as founded on the practice of a durational commitment to nurturing long-term relationships with artists and collaborators. Over the past two decades, we have worked at the nexus of exhibitions, archives and estates to build an extended community of relationships characterized by their substance and durability. PARTICIPANT believes that relationships with artists don’t end with the completion of a project or, in some cases, an artist’s lifetime; instead, that accumulated knowledge creates a responsibility to nurture cross-generational dialogues around artists’ work that calls for an afterlife, and speaks to future audiences.

CARE: Throughout our history, PARTICIPANT has evolved in close conversation with the radical visions of the artists we support. Of particular significance to our early development was a generation of queer artists who, faced with the HIV/AIDS crisis, paved the way for our past and future work through radical acts of care and resistance, entangling these two concepts in new ways. As we evolve, our work with artists and activists involved in the fight for disability justice has introduced us to a vocabulary that builds on this history while giving new shape and political context to our long-held values and practices invested in care.

ACCESS: We strive to eliminate social, cultural, and physical barriers to unmediated experiences of art. We remain conscious that removing physical barriers, ASL interpretation, and open captioning constitute a starting point, not an endpoint. We recognize that economic justice is often a prerequisite for access. Free entry remains a powerful baseline for offsetting inequality and for exploring how PARTICIPANT can fully open our doors to individuals of all experiences. As a not-for-profit art space, we are conscious of the ways the art world functions and work diligently against extractive, hierarchical models. Our work proposes different models of engagement, working toward an action-oriented archive, remembering as practice, and presenting work that not only revises but also contributes to multiple, parallel art histories. PARTICIPANT is committed to creating an inclusive and welcoming alternative space for people of all abilities.

SUSTAINABILITY: We recognize that the climate crisis intersects with the many structural injustices facing artists and communities. We believe the root causes and direct effects will increasingly be felt across all sectors, including the arts. PARTICIPANT is committed to steadily decreasing our environmental footprint as well as advocating for systemic change within our sector. We see our work as part of a dynamic network — a mobilization of care and practices to support sustainability for artists and art workers as agents of collective transformation. 

History

Since 2001, PARTICIPANT has provided a platform for artistic, curatorial, and activist experimentation guided by artists. Our organization is intentionally shaped so that our core values of depth, care, access, and sustainability are reflected and expressed through all facets of our internal and public-facing practices. Our twenty-year history builds upon our commitments to constructing alternative worlds, amending history, and reanimating artists’ legacies. 

When PARTICIPANT INC began, it was only with a laptop, a cell phone, and the sheer conviction that our work with artists needed to be done. It was an extremely challenging moment for New York City nonprofits, particularly a start-up such as ours. PARTICIPANT INC was incorporated in December 2001 with the assistance of New York Lawyers for the Public Interest. The IRS approved our 501(c)(3) status in October 2002. Founding funders such as the MAT Charitable Foundation, as well as a benefit event including performances by Le Tigre, Antony and the Johnsons, Thalia Zedek, and emcee Eileen Myles, enabled PARTICIPANT INC to proceed with plans for the space.

An extensive real estate search in the spring of 2001 concluded at 95 Rivington Street on the Lower East Side with a five-year lease, signed in May 2002. Renovation of the gallery space and preparation for our inaugural programming season commenced in the summer, and we opened our first exhibition, Virgil Marti’s “Grow Room” in November 2002. During our five years on Rivington Street, PARTICIPANT INC worked with numerous artists to develop programs in a uniquely formatted two-level space, presenting individual and group exhibitions, performances, screenings, and educational programs that reflected the cultural moment and supported the activities of visual and time-based artists.

During our formative years, artists were motivated to conceive site-specific projects for PARTICIPANT INC that enabled us to gain an understanding of the sound, light, and spatial qualities of our gallery, and to experiment with ways in which the exhibition space could spill downward into the lower level and outward onto the street outside. Woven into our exhibition schedule were a variety of time-based projects, often presented in tandem with other nonprofit organizations. These included film and video screenings, literary readings, book launches, and live performances. Our literary performance series, SCOUT, curated by Eileen Myles, coincided with visual art exhibitions. The artists who initiated this venture by participating early in our program continue to garner discussion and critical attention, and our future programming builds upon their enterprising approaches to exhibition making in this developing context.

Through its adjacency to the urban life that advanced and embraced it, PARTICIPANT INC remained committed to forging in-depth alliances with artists that resulted in exhibitions, screenings, performances, educational programs, and publications that made a meaningful contribution to the arts community, and endeavored to expand it. The social and cultural history of the downtown art scene, so resonant for generations of artists, informed our choice of a Lower East Side location, long before its resurgence as a gallery sector.

Our neighborhood is enhanced by its long-standing commitment to not-for-profit art activities, however, maintaining a nonprofit here has become increasingly difficult. In 2007, our previous lease was not renewed due to sharply escalating rent, which prompted our relocation to a storefront at 253 East Houston Street. This ambitious move, only five years into the life of our organization, was just one example of the consistent, unwavering effort necessary to keep PARTICIPANT INC moving forward. In the midst of relocation, our 2008-2009 season saw a number of anticipated, as well as unforeseen obstacles, which were overcome due to a committed network of foundations, individuals, and artists. Our experiences have demonstrated while more challenges certainly await, that with modest resources, so do invaluable opportunities for shaping the cultural landscape, so in need of productive points of view.

After over fifteen years on East Houston Street, PARTICIPANT relocated to 116 Elizabeth Street in February 2023 to launch a multi-year project aimed at strengthening our program and envisioning a sustainable future. In the months leading up to our move and following, PARTICIPANT gathered tools to invest considerably in digitizing and archiving under-supported artists’ work, re-envisioning our workspace, and upgrading an accessible exhibition venue in Manhattan. Our goal during this phase of radical intention setting is to unite our exhibitions and estates programs under one roof, offering a picture of the promise our future holds: a more permanent space, a space that encourages cultural transformation while providing research and care for prior experimental artistic practices, a repository of intergenerational memory, speaking to the future. 

General Press