In the Bronx, A Pop-up Art Show is a Lightning Rod for Fear of Gentrification

7/14/15 8:20 AMIn the Bronx, a Pop-up Art Show Is a Lightning Rod for Fear of Gentrification

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In the Bronx, a Pop-up Art Show Is a Lightning Rod forFear of Gentrificationby Jillian Steinhauer on July 13, 2015

The Old Bronx Borough Courthouse, with a work by Lady K Fever on the scaffolding covering its faade (allphotos by the author for Hyperallergic)

There werent many protesters just seven but they were loud. As the guests, many of them white,clutched their cups and cans and milled about the unfinished space, the protesters, mostly black andLatina women, began shouting: Do not use art to pimp us out!

How many people are here that live in this neighborhood? yelled one, while others handed out flyers.How many people from this neighborhood are here?

It was an April 23 opening for No Longer Empty (NLE), the New York nonprofit that stages artexhibitions in formerly abandoned buildings and vacant spaces. Organized by guest curator RegineBasha, the show was titled When You Cut Into the Present the Future Leaks Out, and it was taking



place inside the Old Bronx Borough Courthouse, a towering Beaux-Arts building that straddlesBrook and Third avenues at the intersection of East 161st Street in Melrose. The courthouse had beenclosed to the public, before this day, for 37 years.

Those protests took us by surprise, as nothing like that has occurred before, the NLE team (whichdoes not include Basha) told me over email as a unit. The nonprofit was founded in 2009, during therecession, and prides itself not only on its exhibitions but on community engagement. Its staffmembers of whom there are also seven were hardly expecting protesters. We understand inhindsight, and from our partners, that NLE was a foil of sorts for long-standing community issues.

More than a foil, one might say that NLE and its Bronx show have become a crucible for long-standingcommunity issues ones like displacement and gentrification, property ownership and development,and the role of the arts in those things. Over the past few months, these conflicts and questions havedescended on the courthouse in the form of protests, conversations, and artworks (a piece by MelissaCaldern illustrates The South Bronx Gold Rush of 2015 with gold embroidery thread atop anabstracted birchwood plot of land). They have taken up residence and burrowed into the crevices ofthe musty old building. They are, however, only the most recent layer to settle atop decades offrustration and neglect.



* * *

Ground floor of the courthouse, with Ellen Harveys The Pillar-Builder Archive (2013) on the table

The Old Bronx Borough Courthouse was once simply the Bronx Borough Courthouse, when it was builtin the early 20th century. Designed jointly by architect Michael J. Garvin and artist Oscar Bluemner,with a statue of an enthroned Lady Justice by Jules douard Roin on the facade, the regal four-storybuilding was erected between 190514. Unfortunately, it served as Bronx Countys primary courthousefor just two decades. Because it had only one courtroom, and the Bronxs population exploded rapidly,it was supplanted by a new court on the Grand Concourse and operations were transferred to othercivic courts in the 1930s and 40s, explains the New York Times. By the late 1970s, when the Bronxwas burning, the once-grand granite building with the tile floors, chandeliers, and marble staircaseshad fallen into serious disrepair. When the courthouse was landmarked by the city in 1981 (andadded to the National Register of Historic Places the following year), its primary contents weregraffiti and pigeons.



An old door from the courthouse (click to enlarge)

In the early 1990s, according to the Times, a conglomeration of local community groups, mostprominently Nos Quedamos (We Stay), banded together to try and gain control of the courthouse.Envisioning the building as a kind of town center for Melrose, the groups petitioned the city for a leaseand raised roughly $6 million to put towards the creation of a library, museum, and after-schoolprograms. But the city declined Mayor Rudolph Giuliani put a thumb in the eye of his rival BronxBorough President Fernando Ferrer, is how the Mott Haven Herald describes it and in 1996 thecourthouse was sold at at auction to Gus Kitkas and the Five Borough Electrical Supply Corporationfor $130,000.

Two years later Kitkas had done nothing and the city auctioned the building again. Nos Quedamos bidon the structure but lost to Henry Weinstein and Benjamin Klein of Liberty Square Realty, who paid$300,000. The pair set off neighborhood flares once again when they put the courthouse on themarket for $1.8 million in 2000, though they never succeeded in selling it. In the years since theyveadvertised their rehabilitation and renovation efforts and tried to entice tenants with federal taxcredits, all to no avail. The building remains empty.

* * *

Or rather, it did, until April, when NLE filled it with art. And that was really the first problem art used



as an advertisement for private development although no one picked up on it until the secondproblem emerged and immediately galvanized people: a planned party for real estate brokers in thecourthouse during the run of the show. Future Tenant A Broker Party, the event was called,scheduled for June 16 and advertised on NLEs website. The listing, which is now gone, read:

NLE will promote cultural and economic vibrancy in The Hub, using the Old BronxBorough Courthouse as a springboard to gauge interest in its long-term future use. Toincrease the neighborhoods visibility, NLE and SoBRO [South Bronx OverallEconomic Development Corporation] will introduce people to the neighborhood, andhave created a tailored map highlighting sites of interest.

Utilizing its long-standing presence in the community, unique to No Longer Emptysholistic model, NLE and SoBRO will host a tenant attraction event to conveneentrepreneurs, real estate brokers, and business owners interested in the area.

Flyer given out by the protesters (click to enlarge)

That was what really sparked everything, says Wanda Salaman that being news of the brokersparty, which reached Salaman, executive director of local nonprofit Mothers on the Move (MoM) andone of the seven protesters, via concerned artists and activists in the community.

What triggered me is Im hearing about this attraction party at the Old Courthouse, and then when Imgoing to the location of the event, I see all these people coming from all over, not from theneighborhood, going to the opening . It was very overwhelming, for me and for people in thecommunity. They were asking me: Who are these people, and what are they doing here? We didntknow of an art opening what are these white people doing here? Some people were like, Imgetting scared. Most of the time when I see a lot of caucasians, I see them at Yankee Stadium. At161st Street, in the middle of the hood, its rare. What is going on? Who are those people coming to



the neighborhood? And why did no one know about it?

Some people, of course, did know about it. No Longer Empty received a grant for the show from theDepartment of Small Business Services, and through that and their own efforts they developed anumber of community partners including Casita Maria Center for Arts & Education, Ed GarcaConde/Welcome2TheBronx, and the Percent for Green project all of whom presumably knewabout the opening.

What people didnt seem to know about was the brokers party. The artists in the show didnt (or elsedidnt care) they only learned about it when one of them, Shellyne Rodriguez, stumbled upon it onNLEs website a few days after the opening. No one saw it; it was just quietly announced on theirwebsite, she says. So I screenshot-ed it and I emailed it to all the artists. I was like, you guys, whatsgoing on here?

Abigail Deville, and justice for all? (2015), on-site construction debris, broken marble, branches, reclaimedwood, dead Christmas trees, accumulated debris, heirlooms, TVs, computer monitors, phones, oven

Between the opening night protest and Rodriguezs email to the artists in the show, pressure beganmounting on NLE to take some sort of action. The point of contention was not only the brokers party,but also NLEs relationship with SoBRO, a nonprofit that, despite being based in the South Bronx since1972, has a less-than-stellar reputation among the people I spoke with. Im hearing that they are theones that are opening the gates to big developers to do whatever they want in the Bronx, saysSalaman. Nobody I spoke to could offer specific examples of the ways in which SoBRO is facilitating



the boroughs gentrification. Nevertheless, that SoBRO and NLE were evidently planning to hold aprivate event to market a building whose private ownership is itself a longstanding soreness in thecommunity did not help.

And so a series of emails and phone calls and exchanges ensued. Representatives from NosQuedamos, MoM, and other community organizations wanted to meet with NLE, not at the courthousebut on their own turf. Radical grassroots group Take Back the Bronx wrote a letter: We are verydisheartened and honestly, very angry that artistic engagement with our community is being usedto push the agenda of developers and financiers: gentrification. Rodriguez delivered the letter, andshe spoke with one side and then the other, acting as a messenger between the art people and thecommunity. It was a role that both suited and weighed on her.

Me being from the Bronx but being an artist, I wear two hats, she says. I am critiquing the show andtalking shit, but Im in the show. You see what Im saying? Rodriguezs relationship to the courthouseruns deeper than just being from the Bronx (like a handful of others in the show). The last time hermother was in the building, she was pregnant with Shellyne. And during the summer of 1977,Rodriguezs uncle was briefly locked up there during the blackout riots. Two of her pieces in When YouCut Into the Present harken back to that time: magnetically expressive small-scale ceramic sculpturesthat portray her family members as allegorical figures. Theyre among the works in the show mostcarefully attuned to their surroundings.

Shellyne Rodriguez, Geperudeta (2014), ceramic



Still, Rodriguez has no illusions about what it means to be a working artist in New York today evenone from the Bronx. Artists are not the root cause [of gentrification]. But artists are well aware at thispoint that we are the bees to the honey. Were strike breakers, is what I say. The New York tenants,theyre on strike. Theyre fighting for their lives, and were coming in as scabs for developers. So, if youknow that you know thats the model then are you using yourself as bait to developers in order togain access to interesting spaces without really fully thinking about the repercussions?

* * *

In the middle of May, fed up with all the back-and-forth, the groups Mothers on the Move, NosQuedamos, Take Back the Bronx, Banana Kelly, and Rebel Diaz Arts Collective invited staffmembers of NLE, as well as the artists and partners involved with the show, to a community meeting atNos Quedamoss headquarters on May 30. NLE President Manon Slome, Executive Director NaomiHersson-Ringskog, curator Regine Bosha, and some of the artists attended. It was there that Slomequietly announced NLE had ended its relationship with SoBRO and canceled the brokers party. Iwould say that was a community victory, reflects Salaman.

In its place, NLE said it planned to hold a tenant attraction event, which would be, rather than privateand only for brokers, an open event, for the community. According to Rodriguez, that event wasplanned for the afternoon of June 16 the same date and time as the original brokers party butwhen she emailed the day before to check on its status, she was told that NLE had pushed it back tomid-July.



The June 18 panel

A few days afterwards, on June 18, the Center for Bronx Nonprofits hosted a panel discussion at thecourthouse. Titled Shifting Sands: New Dynamics in the Bronx Art Scene, it convened sevenestablished members of the Bronx art community including former Bronx Council on the ArtsDirector Bill Aguado, artist and Percent for Green founder Alicia Grullon, and Edwin Torres, deputycommissioner of the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs to grapple with the challenges currentlyfacing artists and arts organizations in the Bronx. Despite taking place at 11:30am on a Thursday,some 75 people turned up, including members of MoM, Nos Quedamos, and Take Back the Bronx,plus Rodriguez.

Like so many of its kind, the panel consisted more of a series of monologues than a substantialdialogue. The concerns discussed were entirely founded but deeply familiar: fears of displacement, thearts as a force of gentrification, the question of how to bridge the gap between artists and community.How can the community stay strong in this overly capitalistic environment? asked Arthur Aviles; Weneed to ask funders to uninvest from activities that displace, said Grullon. Things were proceedingsmoothly, if dryly, when Michael Kamber, founder of the Bronx Documentary Center, introducedhimself and said: Frankly, I dont think we should be in this building today. There are plenty of spacesin the Bronx. We should not be in bed with for-profit developers. A number of audience memberscheered and applauded.


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Onyedika Chuke, detail of Untitled (2015), concreteblocks, wall drawing, papier-mch (click to enlarge)

The panel wasnt meant to be about the courthouse or No Longer Empty, but certainly there was nogetting around that we were there we were sitting in the building, amid a show whose very existencecrystallized so many of the issues the panelists had gathered to discuss. It seemed hardly acoincidence that an oversize color drawing of Giuliani by the artist Onyedika Chuke hung on a wall not10 feet behind us; his arms were crossed and his stern face seemed to taunt the community he hadonce shunned.

Kamber wasnt the only one who wanted to talk about the courthouse and NLE. During the Q&Asession, a woman from Take Back the Bronx approached the mic. These issues affect artists but alsoall people, working-class people, she said heatedly, before accusing NLE of scheduling a brokersparty in the space and demanding an answer to the question: What is the agenda from No LongerEmpty?

Questions are to be directed to the panel, countered the moderator, a soft-spoken man from theBronx Council on the Arts. The young woman, shouting from her seat, retorted, What is the agendafrom No Longer Empty? The room came to a standstill, and it seemed that others wanted an answer



to this question too. Manon Slome stepped up. She laid out the mission of NLE, told everyone that thebrokers party had been canceled, and added that NLE wanted the community to come and visionwhat the building could be.

Because, she explained, The fact remains that it is a vacant building.

Melissa Caldern, The Bronx River (2015), 3 panels consisting of plywood, embroidery thread, tar

The fact also remains that no one besides Henry Weinstein, Benjamin Klein, and Liberty Square Realtyknows what the future of the Old Bronx Borough Courthouse might be. During the panel discussion,Mike Kamber claimed that a woman he knows someone whos worked in the Bronx for 30 years andruns a nonprofit offered the owners a large sum of money for the building, but they turned her down.She then offered them top-dollar rent to put a school in, and again they said no. The owner of thisbuilding is holding out to cash in, Kamber pronounced.

When I followed up with him to confirm the story, Kamber said he could tell me only that it washearsay the woman would not go on the record but that I totally trust her.

I think we have to be very careful when for-profit developers tell us theyre here to help thecommunity, he added. These things dont happen in a vacuum. If you look at what happened inDumbo, on the Lower East Side, in Williamsburg, artists become part of the strategy for real estateinvestors. They use the cachet and the creativity of artists to make money, and in the end the artistsare the ones that get pushed out artists and low-income people.



I tried calling Liberty Square Realty, as well as another real estate company listed to Weinsteins name,and I asked No Longer Empty to contact Weinstein on my behalf. I was never able to reach him oranyone else, not even a secretary.

David Scanavino, Untitled (2015), linoleum tile (click toenlarge)

The staff of NLE says now that they have scrapped the idea of a tenant attraction event altogether, infavor of initiating a four-to-six-month community visioning phase for the building. What Imenvisioning is community groups sitting down and talking about how the community can tackle thisissue of working with a private building owner, coming up with a plan instead of just throwingeverything against the wall and seeing what sticks, says Lindsay Smilow, NLEs director of externalaffairs.

These efforts are admirable, and Salaman says she appreciates how responsive NLE has been. Theyhave been trying they just had no idea what they were getting into, she says.

But Salaman also makes a good point when she reminds me that Nos Quedamos has already done avisioning around what people in the community want to see at the courthouse. Theyve been planningand fighting for that building for 20 years. I guess there should be a meeting with the community to talkabout the space, but the next step is really having a meeting with the owner, Salaman says. We haveall types of meetings with No Longer Empty, but it doesnt matter because they dont own the building.Maybe in Melrose art can at least start a conversation between local residents and propertydevelopers.



The entrance to the No Longer Empty exhibition at the Old Bronx Borough Courthouse, flanked with works byLady K Fever.

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In the Bronx, A Pop-up Art Show is a Lightning Rod for Fear of Gentrification