Leslie Ward, a volunteer neighborhood coordinator for GO, representing Prospect Lefferts Gardens
How would you like a say in which artists make it into a major art institution, or just a glimpse of the curatorial process? This September 8 and 9, the public will be invited to visit the studios of artists throughout Brooklyn, and then nominate their favorites for a Brooklyn Museum exhibition that will open in December.
The initiative is called GO: a community curated open studio project, which borrows from the popular open studios and art crawls that take place throughout the year in neighborhoods like Bushwick, SONYA, DUMBO and Gowanus.
GO, however, is open to any artist in any Brooklyn neighborhood–you just need to register your studio at www.gobrooklynart.org by June 29. Come August and September, the public is invited to create a profile and nominate their favorite artists online after the borough-wide open studios on September 8 and 9. Then two of the Museum’s curators–Sharon Matt Atkins and Eugenie Tsai–will visit the studios of the top-nominated artists to select work for the exhibition, which opens on the December 1 Target First Saturday and runs through February 23.
The project will ultimately document all the living, working artists in Brooklyn (who are willing to open their doors) and make the public privy to decisions that are normally reserved for a museum’s staff and its board. Register here if you have a studio, or pass this on to someone who does. (You can keep tabs on the numbers here). Volunteers–like the ones posted to the project’s Tumblr–are needed too.
