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Foundation for Contemporary Arts encourages, sponsors, and promotes innovative work in the arts.

09/23/2026

FCA Board Member James Welling ()’s latest exhibition, "Cento," opens tomorrow, Thursday, September 24 at the Fairfield University Art Museum () in Fairfield, CT. The exhibition will be on view from September 25 through December 12. See below for details.

On September 24, Jim will give an artist's talk from 5:30-6:30 PM in the Kelley Theater, which will be followed by an opening reception in the adjacent Walsh Gallery from 6:30-8:30 PM.

Via : “This exhibition focuses on more than 60 recent works by contemporary photographer James Welling (American, born 1951). From the artist’s 'Cento' and 'Personae' series, these photographs of ancient sites in Italy and Greece, as well as antiquities found in museums around the world, were subjected to digital and painterly alteration by the artist to achieve transformative effects.”

Free admission

Gallery hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday: 11 AM - 4 PM; Thursday: 11 AM - 8 PM

For more information, visit the Fairfield University Art Museum’s website.

Image credit: James Welling, "Fragment of a gold leaf wreath", 2020, laser print with oil paint. Courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects. © James Welling

09/16/2026

Don’t miss the world premiere of 2026 Grantee Benjamin Akio Kimitch ()’s “Allegra” at New York Live Arts Theater on Thursday, October 8 through Saturday, October 10 at 7:30pm. See below for details.

Via : “Choreographer Benjamin Akio Kimitch conjures a fantasy Japanese American court dance where history presses against memory, and memory against imagination. Drawing from family oral history and years of research in the United States and Japan, ballet stages give way to temple grounds, barren foothills, army barracks, and the stench of empty horse stables. Benjamin’s Allegra turns to Bugaku, an ancient dance form whose roots stretch across Persia, India, China, Korea, and Japan. In postwar U.S.-Japan relations, performances of Bugaku inspired multiple collaborations with New York City Ballet, including George Balanchine’s own Bugaku ballet. These histories converge through a Japanese American lens anchored by the aftermath of the camps in World War II. Benjamin and his ensemble, Jessica Cook, Lai Yi Ohlsen, Glenn Potter-Takata, and Nami Yamamoto, bring these collective memories to life."

Tickets start at $30. To purchase, visit ' website.

Performances will be accompanied by Allegra Activations, a series of free public programs co-organized by Jeffrey Gan and Benjamin Akio Kimitch and held across NYC. See below for details.

Wednesday, September 30 at 7:00PM
Film Screening: History and Memory: For Akiko and Takashige
The Wythe Hotel
Doors 6:30PM
Free with RSVP

Friday, October 9 at 6:00PM
Pre Show Talk with Jeffrey Gan and Carlos J. Soto
New York Live Arts Lobby
Free with RSVP

Saturday, October 10 at 6:00PM
Gagaku Music Demo with Columbia Gagaku Instrumental Ensemble of New York
New York Live Arts Studio
Free with RSVP

Photo by Alexander Coggin

09/15/2026

Don’t miss 2023 Grantee Azikiwe Mohammed’s () latest exhibition “Where To, From Here,” which opens tomorrow, Wednesday, September 16 at BAXTER ST at Camera Club of NY (CCNY) . The exhibition will be on view through November 11.

“'Where To, From Here' brings together 140 photographs drawn from an ongoing series begun in 2023, which now comprises approximately 280 images. Made primarily with Polaroid film, the photographs trace Mohammed’s travels across the United States, documenting people, places, and sites of gathering along the way.
The question posed by the title is both geographic and political. Mohammed asks what kinds of spaces can hold people as established structures collapse, exclude, or become increasingly unable to serve the communities they were meant to support. He also considers who those structures have never held and how the shape of 'us' continues to expand.

'The camera allows me to concretize an experience without leaving the experience as it is happening. For this exhibition, I wanted to offer that experience to others that may be further from said original experience. That further can be physical but is often a distance imposed on us by others. Hopefully there is something to be seen of oneself here,' said Azikiwe Mohammed, BAXTER ST 2026 Mid-Career Artist Initiative Recipient. 'I have learned some of my biggest learnings in hotel rooms, diners, and caves. Hopefully this offering of Polaroids, custom tablecloths and brochures can be a more-learning offering, with enough space for new learnings to be had for all interested.'”

Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 12PM - 6PM

Photo credit: Azikiwe Mohammed, Outside #256, 2026. Courtesy of the artist and BAXTER ST at CCNY.

09/12/2026

2026 Alvin Lucier Awardee Olivia Block () is performing in New York City today, Saturday September 12 and Thursday, September 17. See below for details.

Today, Saturday, September 12: QUADRAPHONICS at 2:30PM and 7:30PM at Light and Sound Design () in Brooklyn. Sets also by Lea Bertucci (2026 E-Grants) and Keith Fullerton Whitman ; RSVP for address

will present her piece “Breach,” a “surreal sonic portrait of a lagoon made from field recordings and synths. The listener is plunged into the throbbing depths of a roiling ocean, sent into a furious storm of electronic sea birds and moves with the waves lapping inside the rocky walls of a cave."

Thursday, September 17: Katherine Young: BIOMES (album release) at 8:00 PM at Roulette () in Brooklyn.

“In celebration of BIOMES, composer/bassoonist Katherine Young’s forthcoming Chaikin Records release, Young performs with electronicist Olivia Block, multi-instrumentalist Ben LaMar Gay, percussionist Brian Chase, and the piano-percussion quartet Yarn/Wire.

The program features Yarn/Wire performing Young’s immersive BIOMES 6.0, a world premiere by Block and Young using tape machines, and improvisations by Gay, Chase, and Young—three distinct voices in creative music.”

Image credit: Olivia Block performing “Breach” at Casa del Lago, Mexico City, Mexico, 2024. Photo by Oscar Villanueva Dorantes.

09/10/2026

Instrument Object, an exhibition by Josiah McElheny, opens today, September 10 at The Kitchen. The exhibition will be on view through November 7.

Instrument Object pays homage to visionary musicians and composers from across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, drawing on the legacies of pioneering voices with historical ties to The Kitchen such as Pauline Oliveros (1994 Grantee), Lucia Dlugoszewski, Julius Eastman, and John Cage (FCA Co-Founder), as well as other luminaries of the field including, Milford Graves, David Grubbs (2006 Grantee), Big Mama Thornton, Joe McPhee, Wes Montgomery, and Sun Ra.

Via — “In works of sculpture, painting, installation, and drawing, ranging from 2014 to 2026 and never before exhibited in New York City, McElheny translates the work of ten musical artists into visual form. The exhibition is an experiment in animating the inanimate through sound and movement: transforming The Kitchen’s loft space into an installation of image, sound, motion, and light, where works unpredictably activate, hum with the sound of motor gears, or encourage visitors to imagine an invisible music.

Across these works, McElheny creates visual allegories for fundamental investigations within experimental music: the mysterious nature of vibration, the relationship of rhythm to the circulatory system of the human body, and connections between freedom and unpredictability within improvisation.”

Gallery Hours: Wednesday–Saturday, 12–6pm (Free)

Image credit: Heartline, 2023, courtesy the artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago. Photo by Robert Chase Heisman for Bob.

09/08/2026

2024 Roy Lichtenstein Awardee Malcolm Peacock ()'s latest solo exhibition “Of the sacred and eternal blessing” opens at Sikkema Malloy Jenkins () in the back galleries this Thursday, September 10. The exhibition will be on view through October 24.

Via the artist: “Together, the works in the exhibition form what I would call a convening of indelible experiences. When I returned to New York City in the Fall of 2023 from a second summer in the Pacific Northwest, I found myself once again inside the contour of a shadow that had been cast upon me by the region’s natural environment. Some of the works in this show begin with that inspiration but depart from, or rather build off of, the previous works’ desire to depict or interpret the landscape and instead are now more so serving as markers of spirit or feeling that the outdoors evoke for me. Full of growth, repetition, and an inability to be fully calculated (due to immeasurable years of development), I am invested in these forms, especially for Black folks who historically hold socialized fears around such environments, as locations or spaces of experience where one can contemplate the significance of both being among the stillness and power of these types of environments, and understanding such environments as entities that are very similar to interactions that occupy human life in the ways that we choose individuals and collectives to convene with, bond to, and rely upon for needs and spiritual development. It is important to mark this relationship as one that is deeper than an optical understanding of community or solidarity and to hold it as something akin to dire interdependence.”

The opening reception will be held on Thursday, September 10 from 6–8pm.

Photo credit: Courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Malloy Jenkins.

09/05/2026

"Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this."
–John Cage

Today we celebrate FCA's Co-Founder, John Cage, on what would have been his 114th birthday!

📸: John Cage rehearsing at Westbeth, New York in Spring 1972. Photo by James Klosty.

09/04/2026

Don’t miss Roya Amigh’s () Emergency Grant supported solo exhibition “Presence of the Absent,” on view at KODA House (.lab) 407b, Governors Island, NY through September 27.

Amigh’s work “examines the fragile terrain where women’s movements, personal histories, and collective memory intersect. Across installations, drawings, and works on paper created between 2019-2026, the exhibition traces how Amigh’s practice moves between drawing and textile to explore identity through gender, class, sexuality, and the lived experiences of women across generations.

Her imagery draws from Persian miniature painting, photographs from women’s movements across different geographies, places she has documented in Iran, and stories that stay with her over time. By reducing the vivid colors of miniature painting, reshaping its figures, and emphasizing line, textile, and gesture, she reinterprets the tradition through a quieter, more intimate lens.

In her recent works, Amigh turns toward memory, loss, and the traces left behind by violence. Fragmented forms, layered paper, stitching, handwritten text, and repeated marks explore the relationship between the body and its absence. Rather than depicting violence, these works inhabit its aftereffects. They ask what remains when a body is no longer there, how memory attempts to reconstruct what has been taken, and how absence becomes part of daily life. Drawing from personal and collective experiences of grief, the exhibition reflects on the quiet persistence of what refuses to disappear.”

Photo credit: Roya Amigh, “I Still Rise,” 2023. Photo courtesy of the artist.

08/25/2026

S.E.M. Ensemble (.e.m.ensemble) will present MUSICA ELETTRONICA (II) at Paula Cooper Gallery () on Tuesday, September 15 at 7:30pm.

Program:
Michael J. Schumacher, “Room Piece New York 2026” (premiere)
Petr Kotik, “Kontrabandt” (1967), complete version (premiere)

S.E.M. Ensemble is:
Petr Kotik, Director (2022 John Cage Award)
Sam Boston
Ron Kuivila (2008 Grantee)
Emma Mistele
Chris Nappi
Ben Neill
Michael J. Schumacher (2001 Grantee)

Image credit: Michael Schumacher and Petr Kotik at Paula Cooper Gallery, December 2016. Photo courtesy of Paula Cooper Gallery.

Concert will last approximately 90 minutes.

Location: 534 West 21st Street, New York.

Tickets: $15 Advance / $25 Door, available for purchase on Eventbrite.

08/18/2026

“The Universe Breathes Us,” a collaborative exhibition by 2026 Grantee Shirley Tse and Dana Berman Duff ()—working under the name “Relational”—is on view at Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Los Angeles through September 3.

Via : “Ocean tides begin with a relationship. The gravitational pull between the Sun, Moon, and Earth creates a continuous movement of water across the planet, a force generated through proximity and exchange. For ‘The Universe Breathes Us,’ Dana Berman Duff and Shirley Tse examine tidal energy as a framework for considering the forces that emerge between bodies and celestial forms.”

Gallery hours: Tuesdays by appointment, Wednesday - Saturdays 11am to 5pm

Image credit: Installation view of "The Universe Breathes Us" by Relational (Shirley Tse & Dana Berman Duff) at Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. Photo by Gene Ogami, courtesy Shoshana Wayne Gallery.

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