http://www.foundationforcontemporaryarts.org/

Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York, NY (2026)

04/18/2026

We hope you will join us for a program of free performances organized in conjunction with
“Olivia Shao Selects: Exhibition and Sale to Benefit Foundation for Contemporary Arts," at Paula Cooper Gallery, 521 West 21 Street. The exhibition will be on view April 22-25.

On the last day of the exhibition, Saturday, April 25 there will be a reading in the gallery beginning at 4pm with Mónica de la Torre (2022 C.D. Wright Award for Poetry), Timmy Straw (2026 Grants to Artists), and Mei-mei Berssenbrugge.

About the poets:

Mónica de la Torre's seven poetry books include Pause the Document, Repetition Nineteen, The Happy End / All Welcome, and two collections in Spanish published in her native Mexico City. Among other anthologies, she co-edited Women in Concrete Poetry 1959–79. She is the recipient of the 2022 Foundation for Contemporary Arts C.D. Wright Award for Poetry and a 2022 Creative Capital grant. She teaches poetry and translation at Brooklyn College.

Timmy Straw is a poet, musician, and translator. Their poetry often seeks its shape in techniques of music—counterpoint, polyrhythm, ornamentation—and in the experience of the body as a bearer of social meanings. Straw’s first collection, The Thomas Salto (Fonograf Editions, 2023), was listed in the top ten poetry collections of 2023 in the New York Times and Washington Post. Their work has been supported by a Fulbright fellowship (to Moscow), a Kone Foundation grant, the Provost’s Visiting Writer fellowship at the University of Iowa, and Callie’s Berlin.

Born in Beijing, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge is the author of fourteen books of poetry. Her latest collection A Treatise on Stars was shortlisted for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. She has received the Bollingen Prize for Poetry, the Mary McCarthy Prize for public engagement and in 2026 The Frost Medal. Her collaborations include works in theater, dance, music, and the visual arts. She lives in northern New Mexico and in Maine.

📸Slide 1: Photo by Nat Ward
📸Slide 2: Photo by Sara Gilmore.
📸Slide 3: Photo by Claudia Rankine.

04/17/2026

We hope you will join us for a program of free performances organized in conjunction with “Olivia Shao Selects: Exhibition and Sale to Benefit Foundation for Contemporary Arts," at Paula Cooper Gallery, 521 West 21st Street, NY. The exhibition will be on view April 22-25.

Next Friday, April 24 starting at 3pm there will be musical performances in the gallery by violinist and composer Laura Ortman (2022 Grants to Artists) and by percussionist and composer Ryan Sawyer.

About the musicians:

Musician, composer and vibrant collaborator Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache) creates across multiple platforms, including recorded albums, live performances, and filmic and artistic soundtracks. An inquisitive and exquisite violinist, Ortman is versed in Apache violin, piano, electric guitar, keyboards, and amplified violin, and often sings through a megaphone. She is a producer of capacious field recordings. Ortman's Carnegie Hall premiere with the Kronos Quartet is this Saturday, April 25 in New York City, and will feature new music for amplified violin, Apache violin, voice and string quartet. She received an FCA Grants to Artists award in 2022.

Ryan Sawyer is a musician (percussion), composer, academic, and visual artist. He has performed, recorded and toured with countless bands and musicians. Sawyer’s unique approach to improvisation and composition include free form shepherding of sound thru drums and voice. After years of improvisation and side man employment, Sawyer has dedicated his focus and practice to healing thru sound and brings this mindset to every opportunity he has to make music. Presently, he is concentrating on a new piece for a small orchestra and maracas called Ryan Sawyer’s Shaker Ensemble with a release of a live record on Lobby Art Editions.

📸 Slide 1: Photo courtesy the artist.

📸 Slide 2: Photo by Samantha Riot.

04/16/2026

FCA’s 18th benefit exhibition, "Olivia Shao Selects: Exhibition and Sale to Benefit Foundation for Contemporary Arts," opens next week, and will be on view April 22-25 at Paula Cooper Gallery, 521 West 21st Street, NY. We hope to see you at the opening reception on Wednesday, April 22 from 5-8pm!

All works in the exhibition have been generously donated by artists to benefit FCA's grants and awards. An exhibition preview is live on our website - link in bio. For sales inquiries and appointments, please contact Natalia Sacasa at [email protected].

"Grounded in FCA's rich history and oriented toward its future, this exhibition brings artists long associated with the Foundation into dialogue with a new generation of artists whose work is actively reshaping the field." -Olivia Shao, Curator

Performances and Readings next week in the gallery:

· Musical performances will be held on April 24 at 3pm by violinist and composer Laura Ortman (2022 Grants to Artists) and by percussionist and composer Ryan Sawyer
· Poetry Reading on April 25 at 4pm by poets Mónica de la Torre (2022 C.D. Wright Award for Poetry), Timmy Straw (2026 Grants to Artists), and Mei-mei Berssenbrugge

Slide 1: Char Jeré, "Serviceberry and Waxwing," 2026. Acrylic, copper, lighting gel filter, balloon, mesh tape, shop towel, sandpaper, service tag, dry wall, collage on office tile, 24" x 23 3/4". Courtesy of the artist

Slide 2: Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Notebook Page: "Proposal for a Colossal Monument - 'Prepared Piano' with Mushroom and Screw (for John Cage). First Studies," 1987. Pencil, ballpoint pen, felt pen, 11" x 8 1/2". Courtesy of Paula Cooper Gallery © Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen

Slide 3: Nobutaka Aozaki, "Street Cans Ginger Ale," 2020. Reconstructed tin can, 3" x 3" x 5 1/2". Courtesy of the artist

Slide 4: SoiL Thornton, "Bolder to Boulder (for the Rock on Montrose, October 5th-November 20, 2020)", 2021. Inkjet print and plastic collage on Val Hennessy's "In the Gutter" page, matted and framed in polished steel , 19 1/2" x 27 1/2" x 2 1/2". Courtesy of the artist and Maxwell Graham

04/09/2026

See Emergency Grant recipients LIZN'BOW ()’s performance, "Novelas de Niñas" at Springdale Station () as part of as part of Fusebox Festival () in Austin, TX on April 17 at 10pm.

Via : "Produced by artist duo LIZN’BOW, Novelas de Niñas is a bilingual feminist reggaeton concert unfolding inside Niñalandia, a pop-heavy universe shaped by music, mass media, and collective fantasy. Part installation and part interactive theater, the work flips familiar entertainment formats by placing femme, q***r, and latin performers at its center. Loud, playful, and unapologetically confrontational, Novelas de Niñas channels collective release from global crises as an act of feminist becoming. Operating through a “pro-pocalyptic” lens, the work treats collapse not as an ending but as an opening, where new forms of joy, agency, and communal imagination can emerge.

Performed live by Liz and Bow’s reggaeton duo Niña, the show blends concert intensity with video art, music, and audience interaction. Songs anchor the structure while characters, images, and power dynamics shift around them. What starts as recognizable spectacle moves subtly throughout the show toward excess, humor, and instability. Familiar modern media tropes such as brand sponsorship, ads, and pop stardom are pushed toward absurdity, not as parody but as a strategy for rupture, allowing outdated narratives around gender, success, and visibility to crack open in real time."

Learn more at the link in ’s bio.

04/08/2026

FCA is pleased to announce its 18th benefit exhibition, “Olivia Shao Selects: Exhibition and Sale to Benefit the Foundation for Contemporary Arts,” to be presented from April 22-25 at Paula Cooper Gallery, 521 West 21st Street, NY. An opening reception will be held April 22 from 5-8pm.

The benefit exhibition will feature new and recent works contributed by an intergenerational group of 46 generous artists and artist estates. FCA invited Olivia Shao, Burger Collection & Toy Meets Art Curator at The Drawing Center to curate the exhibition. Works will be offered for sale and available for viewing and inquiries on our website - link in bio. To view the full artist list, please swipe left!

Performances and readings will be held in the gallery on Friday, April 24 and Saturday, April 25

Shao writes, “Grounded in FCA’s rich history and oriented toward its future, the exhibition brings artists long associated with the Foundation into dialogue with a new generation of artists whose work is actively reshaping the field. It is an honor to organize this exhibition to benefit the Foundation, and I am deeply grateful to all the artists whose participation makes this exhibition possible.”

Design by Rissa Hochberger

Nobutaka Aozaki
Richard Artschwager
Bill Bollinger
Cecily Brown
Matt Browning
Anne Collier
Jay DeFeo
Agnes Denes
Thea Djordjadze
John Duff
Elizabeth Englander
Covey Gong
Gerald Jackson
Char Jeré
Jasper Johns
Jennie C. Jones
Jilaine Jones
Wyatt Kahn
Valerie Keane
Marc Kokopeli
Andrei Koschmieder
Ralph Lemon
Julian Lethbridge
Siobhan Liddell
Glenn Ligon
Nandi Loaf
Richard Maxwell
Adam McEwen
Peter Moore
Robert Moskowitz
Dean Moss
Okwui Okpokwasili & Peter Born
Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen
Sylvia Plimack Mangold
Seth Price
Stephen Prina
Matana Roberts
Veronica Ryan
Nora Schultz
Alan Shields
Vunkwan Tam
Al Taylor
SoiL Thornton
Jack Tworkov
James Welling
Cici Wu

03/30/2026

Pollinator 🐝 | 7 Days Left in Enrollment
Participants have until April 6 to enroll in Pollinator's May cycle.

Foundation for Contemporary Arts alumni, staff, and community leaders are invited to join in May! Pollinator is a virtual, five-week residency of mutual support. Join peers from , , , , and other vetted orgs to expand your network while deepening your practice.

Enrollment for Pollinator’s spring program is open now through April 6.

If you want to bring more creative momentum and cross-connection to your work, join us at pollinator.coop with code 8F81D3D1

Not affiliated? You can still join Pollinator if a friend who's eligible invites you! 👯

03/19/2026

Choreographer, Performance Artist, and Writer Anh Vo is the recipient of a 2026 Grants to Artists Award in Dance!

Anh Vo’s practice mobilizes the naked body, in its variations, to make explicit the entanglement of power and ghostly forces that cut across flesh. In their artist statement, Vo writes “I am occupied with the task of making the present unrepresentable. I am indebted to dance, psychoanalysis, and Vietnamese folk shamanism—three traditions that contend with the unknown and the unknowable via three different mediums: the body, the unconscious, and the dead. In the pursuit of the unknown and the unknowable, I prioritize bodily logics that resist direct representation. Throughout my practice, the body is less a discrete physical entity than a sensuous vessel of emptiness, with the capacity to channel otherworldly forces.”

Learn more about their work on our website, link in bio.

📸: Photo by Keshia Eugene.

03/18/2026

Choreographer and Director Ogemdi Ude is the recipient of a 2026 Grants to Artists Award in Dance!

Ogemdi Ude’s performances center Black femme grief, legacies, and futures. Her work engages the fleshiness of the Black femme body in motion as a site for enlivening lost peoples and histories. Across her practice, Ude investigates the necessity of losing, and how—in the midst of it—we attempt to make meaning from memory and show evidence of our relationship to the lost subject. In her artist statement, Ude writes “I take a corporeal approach to Black femme futures, mourning, and memory, refuting white hegemonic distancing from death and Western expectations of how to historicize Black stories.”

Learn more about her work on our website, link in bio.

📸: Photo by Chidozie Ekwensi.

03/17/2026

Visual Artist Shirley Tse is the recipient of the 2026 Dorothea Tanning Award!

Shirley Tse is an artist known for her innovative, research-driven installations that merge sculpture, photography, and video to examine materiality and social relations. Rooted in experimentation and adaptation, her practice raises timely questions about sustainability and the interconnectedness of contemporary life. In her artist statement, Tse writes “I practice philosophy through sculpture-making. Looking back over more than thirty years of art practice, I see how my multiple “identities,” past and present—as a woman sculptor, educator, multi-job worker, caretaker, immigrant from then-British Hong Kong, mental health patient, q***r person, and student activist—have allowed me to perceive the power dynamics of the web in which we are all enmeshed.”

Learn more about her work on our website, link in bio.

📸: Photo courtesy of the artist.

03/16/2026

Composer, performer, and sound artist Maayan Tsadka is the recipient of a 2026 Grants to Artists Award in Music/Sound!

Maayan Tsadka is a composer, sound artist, improviser, organizer, and teacher whose practice sits at the intersection of environmental listening, acoustic research, and experimental composition. Sound is her primary means of learning from, and communicating with, the world. At the core of the work is an inquiry into sound's environmental, social, and political dimensions. Tsadka’s research spans prehistoric harmony, sonic taxonomy, augmented listening practices, sonic resistance, ecoacoustics, and the roles of echo and resonance. The resulting work reveals hidden architectures of sound, asking how we might listen more deeply and expand human perception.

Learn more about her work on our website, link in bio.

📸: Photo by MUPERPHOTO.

03/15/2026

Poet and translator Timmy Straw is the recipient of a 2026 Grants to Artists Award in Poetry!

Timmy Straw is a poet, musician, and translator whose poetry often seeks its shape in techniques of music—counterpoint, polyrhythm, ornamentation—and in the experience of the body as a bearer of social meanings. Straw’s first collection, "The Thomas Salto" (Fonograf Editions, 2023), takes its name and guiding image from a difficult and dangerous gymnastic move: a leaping triple flip popularized during the final years of the Cold War. The poems shadow Reagan-era politics, the AIDS epidemic, the war on drugs, U.S. proxy wars, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. In their artist statement, Straw writes "In the poems I’m working on now—mangled and key-shifted translations of the biblical psalms—my adversary is the original psalms’ mythical author: the warlord and early singer of songs, our western lyric antecedent and our revenant, the so-called King David."

Learn more about their work on our website, link in bio.

📸: Photo by Sara Gilmore.

03/14/2026

Visual Artist Elle Pérez is the recipient of a 2026 Grants to Artists Award!

Elle Pérez is an artist working across photography, collage, and moving image. Their work depicts intimate moments, emotional exchanges, and visceral details within the love and violence of everyday life. Pérez’s photographs balance casual observation with conceptual and formalist considerations: intentionally sequenced installations, collages that act as mind maps, and structuralist films that highlight the tension between image and text, description and embodiment. Their work celebrates the ambiguity inherent to photography and q***rness—a photograph is not an illustration, it can both resist discursive limitations and hold meaning beyond language.

Learn more about their work on our website, link in bio.

📸: Photo courtesy of the artist.

Foundation for Contemporary Arts

04/18/2026

04/17/2026

04/16/2026

04/09/2026

04/08/2026

03/30/2026

03/19/2026

03/18/2026

03/17/2026

03/16/2026

03/15/2026

03/14/2026

Address

Telephone

Website

Alerts

Contact The Organization

Shortcuts

Featured

Share

Category