The American philanthropist and mega-collector Lonti Ebers will launch a sprawling non-profit art centre in Brooklyn this summer called the Amant Foundation. She is a long-time art collector and supporter of contemporary art. She established Amant to create studios and exhibition spaces that would encourage artistic development and experimentation free of the financial burden and administrative confines that typically accompany art practice in New York.
Amant is a non-profit arts organization fostering experimentation and dialogue through exhibitions, residencies, and public programs at its two locales: the New York City borough of Brooklyn and the Tuscan village of Chiusure in the heart of the Siena province.
The 21,000 sq ft complex will span four buildings across two blocks in East Williamsburg and include two galleries, a performance space and studios for resident artists. Initially expected to be inaugurated in 2019, Amant will now open on June 5 with a survey of Berlin-based artist Grada Kilomba, who has never before had a solo show in New York.
Amant has announced that its artistic director will be Ruth Estévez, who was most recently senior curator-at-large at Brandeis University’s Rose Art Museum in Waltham, Massachusetts, and previously was gallery director of REDCAT in Los Angeles. The centre aims to “emphasise practitioners coming from the disciplines of theory, poetry and literature”, says its artistic director, Ruth Estévez.
The inaugural exhibition, Grada Kilomba: Heroines, Birds and Monsters, which will open on 5 June and run until 3 October, marks the US debut of Kilomba, a Berlin-based Portuguese artist and writer who is best known for her work addressing the trans-Atlantic slave trade and decolonisation. The show will “reflect the role of inherited mythologies in shaping our future and the type of society we would prefer to live in”, Estévez says.
Artists in the residency program, which lasts for three months and will recur three times a year, will be accepted via an open-call application. The plan is to include four artists per cycle, and each will receive a dedicated studio space at Amant and a $3,000 monthly stipend to assist with living costs in New York. But unlike most residency programs, the participants in Amant’s won’t work toward an exhibition—or anything, really. They will simply be given free rein to do research that will then be presented publicly.
Though Amant is primarily looking to bring international artists to New York, as it does with the Italy residency, Estévez said she wants to make sure that the organization still has a connection to Brooklyn’s local art scene. “We want to see how we can integrate into this amazing community,” she said. “For us, it’s a moment to tell things, but also to listen.”
