Momenta Art

Momenta Art was an artist-run, not-for-profit organization and gallery, which from its founding in 1986 to its closing in 2020, exhibited and promoted emerging artists and underrepresented artistic perspectives. Artists who received support from Momenta Art, include Simone Leigh, Chitra Ganesh, Elena Herzog and Mark Tribe.

Origins

Momenta Art was founded in 1986 by a group of 5 artists in Philadelphia- Timothy Aubry, Donna Czapiga, Eric Heist, Christina LaSala, and James Mills. Their first exhibition, The Cast Iron Building Presents Momenta Art, was an inclusive group exhibition of 47 emerging artists working in Philadelphia exhibited in a raw industrial space on Vine Street in Old City loaned to the group by a real estate development company, Growth Properties. The organizers were criticized by an established arts organization, the Philadelphia Art Alliance, for exchanging artworks from the exhibition to be included in Growth Properties’ art collection. The popularity of the exhibition encouraged the founders to rent a five story building, 309 North Third Street, also in Old City, which they pooled their money together to rent, renovate the ground floor into a gallery, and sublet the upper floors as studio space. Momenta Art operated at this space from 1986 to 1990, exhibiting the work of emerging artists. These included now-established artists Jim Hodges, Katy Schimert, and Karen Kilimnik.Momenta established itself as a not for profit organization at this time, and received some funding from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and discretionary funding from Senator Vincent Fumo. However, the financial burden and time required to administer the organization led to the dissolution of Momenta in 1990.

New York City

Momenta founder, Eric Heist relocated to New York where he attended Hunter College graduate school. He met video artist Laura Parnes and together they began to organize exhibitions in NewYork. In 1992 the gallery community was moving out of Soho to Chelsea, leaving many large loft spaces empty in Soho, and available for temporary rentals. Artist Kenny Schachter was already organizing temporary exhibitions in Soho at that time, inspiring Heist and Parnes, who found a 5,000 square foot second floor space available in Soho for $2,000. In order to raise funds for an exhibition they created hand-screened manila envelopes containing multiple artworks by artists John Hatfield, Lucky De Bellevue, John Groh(Jed Brain), Marlene McCarty, Janine Antoni, Sue Williams, Jude Tallichet, Chuck Agro, David Carrino, Jody Culkin, Tony Feher, Paula Hayes, Janet Henry, Jim Hodges, Barry Hylton, Pat Lasch, Julie Melton, Serge Pinkus, Barbara Pollack, and Lily Van Der Stokker, along with Heist and Parnes. They went door-to-door selling these multiple packets to Soho galleries, including gallerists David Zwirner, Sandra Gering, and others, for $30. each. This secured the funding to pay for the space and the exhibition “The Art of Self-Defense and Revenge... It’s Really Hard” which presented the artists included in the multiple collection. The exhibition separated the work of male and female artists,inverting stereotypes of power and passivity. The exhibition was visited by critics Michael Kimmelman and Jerry Saltz who wrote an encouraging review of the exhibition for Art in America magazine. Heist and Parnes followed up in 1994 with an exhibition space rented alongside Bravin Lee Gallery on Mercer Street. Titled “Yes I Am, No I’m Not”, the exhibition included Trudie Reiss, Danny Tisdale, Kenny Schachter, Kerri Scharlin, and others, and focused on created identities.

1995-2006

In March 1995 Momenta Art opened in a permanent exhibition space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Signing a 10-year lease for 5,000 square ft space at 72 Berry Street close to the other emerging galleries. The space consisted of two small exhibition spaces, as well as artist studios that were offered at below market rates. Artists who joined the community over the following ten years included Rico Gatson, Rochelle Feinstein, and Rina Banerjee. During this time period, Momenta Art established itself as one of the hub galleries of the Williamburg art scene, finding success in collaborations with Manhattan galleries, including Ronald Feldman, as well as with the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Working as co-directors, Parnes and Heist, became known for their group exhibition fundraisers at White Columns and other venues in which donated works by artists of note were raffled off to ticket holders. Michael Waugh joined the team managing Momenta Art in 2000 and under his guidance a publically accessible video library was establish. When Parnes step down as co-director in 2004, Waugh took on the role of assistant director.

2006-2011

n 2006, Momenta ARt underwent a relocated to a larger space at 359 Bedford Ave. As it continued to grow, Momenta Art realigned its objectives to meet the needs of artists and adapt to the evolving dynamics of the art market. To complement their exhibitions, the gallery published a newsletter that detailed artists and their creations as well as an annual catalog showcasing all the noteworthy gallery exhibitions. Additionally, the newsletter featured a helpful map highlighting nearby art spaces and provided supportive information for those who were unfamiliar with the Williamsburg arts community. During this period, Momenta Art garnered considerable art world attention for the shows such as Air Kissing (2007), addressed alienation and inequalities in the art world, and Project Rendition (2007), which exmained the Bush administrations clandestine kidnapping and extradition of suspected terrorists and the state-induced fear and disenfranchisement that are far more common means of rendering individuals and whole populations mute or invisible. Momenta Art's time at 359 Bedford was relatively short-lived, however, as a changing demographic and real estage market in Williamsburg encouraged Heist and Waugh to move again, this time to Bushwick, Brooklyn, and a location that offered more space (over 4,000 square feet) and facilities for artists and exhibits than what was negotiable in Williamburg.

2011-2017

The first show for Momenta Art's Bushwick location at 56 Bogart Street, an exhibit of the photography of J. Pasila and Peter Scott, took place in the raw, partially renovated space newly opened gallery. In a curatorial decision that reflected on the provisional natural of their current circumstances and the cyclical nature of neighborhod develpement, Momenta "simply stuck push pins directly through the print and attached them, frameless, on the wall." With funding from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA). plans for the new space included an expansion of the video library project, which housed hundreds of artworks from dozens of artists, and making them permanently available to the public on a searchable database on a touch-screen monitor at the gallery. Plans also included events hosted in the library, including panel discussions with past video artists, and an ongoing curated selection of video work on view in the gallery. With 2,700 feet of dedicated gallery and library space, the rest of the complex would be divided in art studios, storage, and eventually provide facilties for residencies Momenta's exhibitions during this period often critiqued the machinations of the art world and art markets and continued to focus on artists from under represented communities. Bolivia Existe (2013–14) accommodated cross-generational Bolivian artists, whose works respond to Bolivia’s painful history of military dictatorship and neo-liberalization. The exhibition of Occupy Museums (2012) raised a series of questions regarding the political economy within which art institutions are embedded. Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen’s solo exhibition Space Fiction & the Archives (2014) critiqued disguised racism and planned economic exploitation that lurk under rhetoric of multiculturalism. Momenta shifted again from a permanent exhibition space to migratory exhibitions in 2017 due to the changes in support for non-profit art organizations. Returning to successful models of the post, exhibitions and events in this new phase of Momenta's history were presented in collaboration with participating organizations, galleries, curators, and artists.