Art International Radio
Encyclopedia
AIR, Art International Radio is an online, non-profit cultural Internet radio
station at ARTonAIR.org that is also home to the Clocktower Gallery. Operating from the 13th floor of McKim, Mead, and White
's historic Clock Tower Office Building in New York City
, AIR is directed by Alanna Heiss
, the founder and former Director of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, Queens
.
AIR’s radio programming is anchored in thousands of hours of cultural content available free on-demand online at www.ARTonAIR.org. This archive is recognized worldwide as a unique cultural resource, educational tool, and historic repository. In addition to regular new talk programs hosted by curators, critics, writers, musicians, and art world aficionados, the archive contains the entire production output of the former WPS1.org, discontinued last year. Programs include new music, spoken word, theatre and discussions on a variety of topics recorded both in-studio and offsite from art events worldwide such as Art Basel Miami Beach and the Venice Biennale
. AIR is also committed to organizational collaborations by recording, editing and archiving public programs from diverse cultural groups, galleries, museums, and performing art centers.
In parallel with the radio project, the gallery spaces are used for artists’ projects, workshops, community events, and residencies. In June 2009, installations and artworks commissioned by AIR went on view in the galleries and project spaces. Works by Tony Oursler
, Todd Eberle, Mary Heilmann and Sabina Streeter reinaugurated the Clocktower Galler's exhibition program. In June 2010, the second exhibition at AIR's Clocktower Gallery opened; entitled The Dangerous Book Four Boys, it was the first solo exhibition of the work of actor and artist James Franco
.
, Philip Glass
, and Sol LeWitt
, and was organized by Heiss with the help of the post-Minimalist sculptor Gordon Matta Clark. In 1972, under the aegis of this organization, she created the Clocktower Gallery, located on the 13th Floor of a 19th Century city-owned McKim, Mead & White building, on Leonard Street and Broadway in lower Manhattan, New York.
Opening with three inaugural one-person shows by Joel Shapiro
, Richard Tuttle
, and James Bishop (artist), the Clocktower Gallery became a legendary alternative space for performance, installation, and interdisciplinary work. It presented seminal works in all media by such artists as Neil Williams (artist)
, Gordon Matta-Clark
, Max Neuhaus
, Lynda Benglis
, Dennis Oppenheim, Colette Justine
, Vito Acconci
, Nam June Paik
, Robert Smithson
, Charlotte Moorman
, Laurie Anderson
, David Tudor
, and Min Tanaka
, among many others.
After September 11, 2001, security procedures in this City-owned building suspended ongoing activity and exhibitions in the Clocktower. In 2004, the space became the headquarters of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center’s Web radio station, Art Radio WPS1.org.
Since WPS1.org’s discontinuation in December 2008, the Clocktower Gallery space has become home to the offices, recording studios, and gallery spaces of AIR, Art International Radio. The Clocktower Gallery has been host to two exhibitions since its 2009 reinauguration as an exhibition space (see above).
, until the company’s relocation to Madison Square
in 1927. The Clock Tower continued to be used as an office building, housing some City agencies as early as 1939. The City of New York bought the building in 1967 and moved the Criminal Court, Summons Part there, along with several City agencies.
McKim, Mead & White's Broadway frontage is a flamboyant palazzo-like pavilion crowned by a clock tower. The building retains many of New York Life's original interior spaces, including a marble lobby, a 13-story stair hall, a banking hall, executive offices, and the clock tower machinery room.
The Clock Tower Building is a designated New York City Landmark, with both the exterior and parts of the interior landmarked. It is also on the New York State and National Registers of Historic Places.
Internet radio
Internet radio is an audio service transmitted via the Internet...
station at ARTonAIR.org that is also home to the Clocktower Gallery. Operating from the 13th floor of McKim, Mead, and White
McKim, Mead, and White
McKim, Mead & White was a prominent American architectural firm at the turn of the twentieth century and in the history of American architecture. The firm's founding partners were Charles Follen McKim , William Rutherford Mead and Stanford White...
's historic Clock Tower Office Building in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, AIR is directed by Alanna Heiss
Alanna Heiss
Alanna Heiss is the Director of AIR, Art International Radio, an Internet-based art radio station operating out of the Clocktower Gallery in Lower Manhattan, New York. She founded and was the Director of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center from 1976–2008 and is one of the originators of the alternative...
, the founder and former Director of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, Queens
Queens
Queens is the easternmost of the five boroughs of New York City. The largest borough in area and the second-largest in population, it is coextensive with Queens County, an administrative division of New York state, in the United States....
.
Mission and operation
AIR, Art International Radio was launched on January 1, 2009 after negotiations with the former resident, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (which operated its own Internet radio station WPS1.org), and a transfer of the space, equipment, staff, and content was achieved. The non-profit AIR is licensed by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in the legendary Clocktower Gallery spaces, which AIR Director Alanna Heiss has occupied since 1972.AIR’s radio programming is anchored in thousands of hours of cultural content available free on-demand online at www.ARTonAIR.org. This archive is recognized worldwide as a unique cultural resource, educational tool, and historic repository. In addition to regular new talk programs hosted by curators, critics, writers, musicians, and art world aficionados, the archive contains the entire production output of the former WPS1.org, discontinued last year. Programs include new music, spoken word, theatre and discussions on a variety of topics recorded both in-studio and offsite from art events worldwide such as Art Basel Miami Beach and the Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
. AIR is also committed to organizational collaborations by recording, editing and archiving public programs from diverse cultural groups, galleries, museums, and performing art centers.
In parallel with the radio project, the gallery spaces are used for artists’ projects, workshops, community events, and residencies. In June 2009, installations and artworks commissioned by AIR went on view in the galleries and project spaces. Works by Tony Oursler
Tony Oursler
Tony Oursler is a multimedia and installation artist.- Tapes, Installations: 1977-1989:Tony Oursler is known for his fractured-narrative handmade video tapes including The Loner, 1980 and EVOL 1984. These works involve elaborate sound tracks, painted sets, stop-action animation and optical special...
, Todd Eberle, Mary Heilmann and Sabina Streeter reinaugurated the Clocktower Galler's exhibition program. In June 2010, the second exhibition at AIR's Clocktower Gallery opened; entitled The Dangerous Book Four Boys, it was the first solo exhibition of the work of actor and artist James Franco
James Franco
James Edward Franco is an American actor, film director, producer, screenwriter, author, painter, performance artist and instructor at New York University. He left college in order to pursue acting and started off his career by making guest appearances on television series in the 1990s...
.
Clocktower Gallery
In the 1970s, Alanna Heiss emerged as one of the most prominent figures of the alternative space movement. In 1971, she founded The Institute for Art and Urban Resources, which was devoted to creating installations in otherwise unused or overlooked spaces in New York. The Institute's first pioneering exhibition, Under the Brooklyn Bridge, featured such artists as Carl AndreCarl Andre
Carl Andre is an American minimalist artist recognized for his ordered linear format and grid format sculptures. His sculptures range from large public artworks to more intimate tile patterns arranged on the floor of an exhibition space Carl Andre (born September 16, 1935) is an American...
, Philip Glass
Philip Glass
Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...
, and Sol LeWitt
Sol LeWitt
Solomon "Sol" LeWitt was an American artist linked to various movements, including Conceptual art and Minimalism....
, and was organized by Heiss with the help of the post-Minimalist sculptor Gordon Matta Clark. In 1972, under the aegis of this organization, she created the Clocktower Gallery, located on the 13th Floor of a 19th Century city-owned McKim, Mead & White building, on Leonard Street and Broadway in lower Manhattan, New York.
Opening with three inaugural one-person shows by Joel Shapiro
Joel Shapiro
Joel Shapiro is an American sculptor renowned for his dynamic work composed of simple rectangular shapes. Shapiro is represented by The Pace Gallery in New York. He lives and works in New York City, with a summer house on the shore of Lake Champlain, in Westport, New York...
, Richard Tuttle
Richard Tuttle
Richard Dean Tuttle is an American postminimalist artist known for his small, subtle, intimate works. His art makes use of scale and line.- Biography :...
, and James Bishop (artist), the Clocktower Gallery became a legendary alternative space for performance, installation, and interdisciplinary work. It presented seminal works in all media by such artists as Neil Williams (artist)
Neil Williams (artist)
Neil Williams was an American painter. Williams was an abstract painter primarily known for his pioneering work with shaped canvases in the early 1960s. His paintings of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s are associated with geometric abstraction, hard-edge painting, color field, and lyrical abstraction,...
, Gordon Matta-Clark
Gordon Matta-Clark
Gordon Matta-Clark was an American artist best known for his site-specific artworks he made in the 1970s. He is famous for his "building cuts," a series of works in abandoned buildings in which he variously removed sections of floors, ceilings, and walls.-Life and work:Both of Gordon Matta-Clark's...
, Max Neuhaus
Max Neuhaus
American musician Max Neuhaus was a percussionist and interpreter of contemporary music of the 1960s who moved on to become a pioneer in the field of sound art, a term he rejected but with which he is nonetheless associated...
, Lynda Benglis
Lynda Benglis
Lynda Benglis is an American sculptor known for her wax paintings and poured latex sculptures. After earning a BFA from Newcomb College in 1964, Benglis moved to New York, where she lives and works today...
, Dennis Oppenheim, Colette Justine
Colette Justine
Colette Justine better known as Colette is a multimedia artist known for her pioneering work in performance art, street art and the constructed photograph...
, Vito Acconci
Vito Acconci
Vito Hannibal Acconci is a Bronx, New York-born, Brooklyn-based designer, landscape architect, performance and installation artist.-Education:...
, Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the first video artist....
, Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson was an American artist famous for his land art.-Background and education:Smithson was born in Passaic, New Jersey and studied painting and drawing in New York City at the Art Students League of New York....
, Charlotte Moorman
Charlotte Moorman
Madeline Charlotte Moorman Garside was an American cellist and performance artist.She was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. She studied cello from age ten and won a scholarship to Centenary College where she took her B.A. in music in 1955. She received her M.A...
, Laurie Anderson
Laurie Anderson
Laura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson is an American experimental performance artist, composer and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings in a variety of experimental music and art rock styles. Initially trained as a sculptor, Anderson did her first performance-art piece in the late 1960s...
, David Tudor
David Tudor
David Eugene Tudor was an American pianist and composer of experimental music.- Biography :Tudor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied piano with Irma Wolpe and composition with Stefan Wolpe and became known as one of the leading performers of avant garde piano music. He gave the...
, and Min Tanaka
Min Tanaka
is a Japanese actor and dancer. He won the award for best supporting actor at the 26th Japan Academy Prize for The Twilight Samurai.-Filmography:* The Twilight Samurai * The Hidden Blade * House of Himiko...
, among many others.
After September 11, 2001, security procedures in this City-owned building suspended ongoing activity and exhibitions in the Clocktower. In 2004, the space became the headquarters of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center’s Web radio station, Art Radio WPS1.org.
Since WPS1.org’s discontinuation in December 2008, the Clocktower Gallery space has become home to the offices, recording studios, and gallery spaces of AIR, Art International Radio. The Clocktower Gallery has been host to two exhibitions since its 2009 reinauguration as an exhibition space (see above).
Staff
AIR is directed by founder and former director of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center Alanna Heiss and a staff that includes several former P.S.1 employees who were directly involved in the museum’s public programs, exhibitions, and radio station. Managing Director David Weinstein was Director of Public Programs at P.S.1 and led the curatorial team that assembled the summer Warm Up music series there; Jeannie Hopper is a longtime radio personality and DJ at WBAI-FM who takes on the role of Station Manager; and Beatrice Johnson brings curatorial expertise from P.S.1 as AIR’s Program Manager.Building History
Built 1894-1898, the Clock Tower Office Building was originally the home office of the New York Life Insurance CompanyNew York Life Insurance Company
The New York Life Insurance Company is one of the largest mutual life-insurance companies in the United States, and one of the largest life insurers in the world, with about $287 billion in total assets under management, and more than $15 billion in surplus and AVR...
, until the company’s relocation to Madison Square
Madison Square
Madison Square is formed by the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Broadway at 23rd Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The square was named for James Madison, fourth President of the United States and the principal author of the United States Constitution.The focus of the square is...
in 1927. The Clock Tower continued to be used as an office building, housing some City agencies as early as 1939. The City of New York bought the building in 1967 and moved the Criminal Court, Summons Part there, along with several City agencies.
McKim, Mead & White's Broadway frontage is a flamboyant palazzo-like pavilion crowned by a clock tower. The building retains many of New York Life's original interior spaces, including a marble lobby, a 13-story stair hall, a banking hall, executive offices, and the clock tower machinery room.
The Clock Tower Building is a designated New York City Landmark, with both the exterior and parts of the interior landmarked. It is also on the New York State and National Registers of Historic Places.