As reported last Friday, the Swiss Institute, a non-profit cultural center currently located on Wooster Street, has signed a lease for 130 Second Ave. — the former Chase branch.
Landlord Icon Realty issued a news release about their new tenant. Here's part of it:
Icon Realty Management LLC has leased space to Swiss Institute, a non-profit contemporary arts center that promotes artistic dialogue between Switzerland and the United States. Swiss Institute seeks to explore how a national perspective can foster international conversations in the fields of visual and performing arts, design and architecture.
The new location will open in the Spring of 2017. The 7,500 square foot space will feature exhibitions, projects and public programs, a library, bookstore and rooftop. Additionally, Icon will be collaborating with Swiss Institute artists on public art murals at 128 Second Ave, the building next door to the Institute.
“Considering the vibrancy, diversity and ample foot traffic in the neighborhood, our move to the East Village will offer a vast array of opportunities to engage with our audience in new, stimulating ways,” says Swiss Institute Director Simon Castets. “We’re incredibly lucky to be on a street with such a deep artistic history as St Marks Place, and it’s exciting to imagine how this new location can help us in expanding our mission.”
Back in June, Icon announced a project in which artists would be creating murals on Icon properties in the city. Jerkface started work at 128 Second Ave., but the mural has remained incomplete since June...
We asked Icon spokesperson Chris Coffey what the status was on this project.
"We needed a lift to complete the mural, and applied for a permit. We are just waiting for DOT to issue," he said via email. "We are excited about it. One of the great things about Swiss Institute is that we will be collaborating on future murals."
Previously on EV Grieve:
Swiss Institute moving into the former Chase branch on 2nd Avenue and St. Mark's Place
This smells fishy and like a rat.
ReplyDeleteThe majority of art being made in the past few years, particularly "street art", has become a cudgel for the predator developers to drive up rents. Words like vibrancy and diversity continue to excrete from the p.r. tools of these corporations as well as the mouths of the electeds and the govt appointeds to promote these groups as well as whatever town they want to declare hot and drive up market speculation
Whatever the swiss intstitute is, their name conjures up untaxed and unregulated mass monetary savings and high interest rates. This looks like a bigger space for like minded callous greedy people and power and status hungry officials to congregate and make such arrangements.
I hope this doesn't come off too cynical.
Jeez!! Everyone on here just bitches and moans. Whatever opens, people immediately hate it and label the proprietors thieves or scumbags. If this is the "old" generation of East Villagers, I'm glad they're getting pushed out. Get over it, times change - and these are the same people that are still using rotary phones.
ReplyDelete@9:16am: What's your issue with rotary phones??
ReplyDeleteI am sure the painting is not finished because the tools at Icon are too busy hunting for new buildings to rape - er, buy - and therefore oversight over the artist has lapsed.
ReplyDeleteAnon. 9:16 - snark off. If a rotary phone was good enough for Don Draper, it oughta be good enough for an obvious twerp such as yourself. And us 'old-timers' will be here long after you've moved to the 'burbs.
More ludicrous self back patting from the famously tone deaf Icon Realty. Take it easy there, gonna dislocate a shoulder like that.
ReplyDeleteSo THAT's why Icon got rid of The Stage restaurant - so they could use the wall for a mural.
ReplyDelete9:16, you must be new to this blog yes? That's old news but I do like the way you put it. The E.V. Gripers are like a SWAT team, quick assaults against change and the rapid elimination of dissenting opinions.
ReplyDeleteYou would think the Swiss Institute might realize they are be used by Icon as part of their marketing campaign to whitewash their crimes against the community, but I guess not. Developers love to commission street art, it makes them feel cool and edgy. Would be nice if the reason this mural wasn't completed is because the artist found out the story of the Stage and Icon and walked away. We can dream can't we.
ReplyDelete9:16:
ReplyDeleteI'm from queens. I comment here in solidarity. Thanks to the regulars I see here for solid defense.
This is the modus operandi. The predator developers not only use art, they use music, and obviously food, particularly all this high end artisan dining and drinking. Especially binge drinking. They are also trying to shape and dictate the culture here as with other the other boroughs. Even my boring borough isn't safe. As well as other major cities from Seattle to San Fran to even Jersey City. It's practically being done in the style of a pandemic or a pestilence.
This act is getting very tired and too obvious. The jig is up. Wait for the next indictments involving Mayor De Faustio aka The Dope from Park Slope and his circle of subhuman mendacity which includes his agents of the city, that lobbyist maggot Capalino, and other recently enriched landowners. Especially the ones notorious here like Trump's son in law and that little shit Raffiolo or whatever his shitty name his. And those plundering bastards at Slate Properties and all these phantoms, domestic and foreign, in these unregulated LLC's
"drops rotary phone in defiance"
I don't think Jerkface dropped out, he or she is a willful corporate stooge useful idiot. I seen it's work at the Beach Bazaar in Riis Park in Rockaway. Which is just an attempt to remake an historically popular public beach (and federal park) into a some disposable income binge drinking high end luxury hipster playground and cultural mecca. These people have no sense of decency.
Don't understand why people are griping here. Swiss Institute cultural art space is one million times better than Chase bank. Glad to welcome them down here.
ReplyDeleteanon 9:16
ReplyDeletei can't wait to see if you live long enough to be an old timer
i predict a short life with a drug and/or alcohol dulled brain and early onset deafness
my rotary phone will probably outlive you
It has to be Swiss? It can't be a NYC-based arts space? No thanks. I'd probably be opposed but there's no need - Icon will drive them out soon enough, one way or another.
ReplyDeleteIt has to be Swiss? It can't be a NYC-based arts space?
ReplyDeleteExactly.
Are there any arts spaces? besides the ones that waste their talent to pretty up tower pestilence.