Originally incorporated in 1972 as the Committee for the Visual Artists, Inc., Artists Space began as a pilot project of the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), dedicated to assisting young, emerging artists. Trudie Grace, at that time Director of the Visual Arts Project Program at NYSCA, became Artists Space’s first Executive Director, and Irving Sandler, a consultant at NYSCA, became Assistant Director. Originally located at 155 Wooster Street, Artists Space follows a general trend toward alternative art space that began with such organizations as the 112 Workshop (later named White Columns), located at 112 Greene Street and founded in 1970 by Gordon Matta-Clark and Jeffrey Lew, and the Institute for Art and Urban Resource (later named P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center), founded in 1971 by Alanna Heiss.
The history of the development of Artists Space is also the history of the alternative exhibition space movement in the United States, a phenomenon for which it served as both catalyst and model.
All the artists (more than 5,000), critics and curators who have helped build this organization and who have shared in the life of Artists Space are thus part of the history of the contemporary New York art world of the past 30 years: Laurie Anderson, Cindy Sherman, Silvia Kolbowsky, David Salle, Jenny Holzer, Tony Oursler, Gregg Bordowitz, Annette Messager, Reneè Green, Kiki Smith, Ann Hamilton, Féliz Gonzalez-Torres, Andrea Fraser, Mike Kelley, Nan Goldin, Allan McCollum, Alfredo Jaar, Andrea Zittel, to name only a few.
During its first year, Artists Space’s exhibitions were organized by three artists, each selected another artists to show. That is what its title stated: a space determined by artists. The founders wanted to make an organization as open and clean as possible because there was such an acute sense of the gallery system being locked up and controlled by critics, curators and dealers. They wanted artists to have major decision-making power right from the start and they decided that half their Board would be comprised of artists. They believed that this would make them different from typical arts organizations, which are controlled by non-artists administrators and trustees. Artists would choose who was to be displayed. Initially, Artists Space especially considered artists who were in contact with mostly unaffiliated artists: among them Chuck Close, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Nancy Graves, Vito Acconci and Dorothea Rockburne.
Many actually famous artists had their first exhibitions at Artists Space. Its original intent was to present an opportunity where artists had choices and could control how their work was presented. Rather than mediating between art and the public, the idea was to present the work in a more direct way, responding to the artists’ need for exhibition space free from political and commercial considerations. The focus was not about putting together a perfect exhibition, but was much more about experimentation, pushing the boundaries of artistic practice and the institutional framework in which artists present their work.

“We curate artists, not the art”, said Linda Shearer, Executive Director of Artist Space (1980 to 1985), in an interview from a book published for Artists Space’s 25th anniversary. Artists Space is an organization dedicated to artists and their work and it has always had a service component. “In fact, when it started, it never really intended to be an exhibition space. Artists Space started with the idea of assisting artists”: the primary focus was on financially supporting artists. It established several artists services, including, the Emergency Materials Fund (by 1973), and the Independent Exhibitions Program (by 1976). Both these small financial awards was intended to directly aid artists and, as a result, the activity generated by them included some of the most experimental and challenging art produced in that period. The Emergency Materials Fund (EMF) assisted artists who were having shows in other non-profits venues (e.g., colleges, libraries, galleries, museums) and needed them to cover the basic presentation costs associated with the exhibition that could not be absorbed by the host venue (i.e., shipping, insurance, framing, etc.). Instead, the Independent Exhibitions Program (IEP) served to support the needs of artists who were involved in the creation, production and presentation of work in unconventional contexts outside of the existing institutional structure (e.g., open studios, exhibitions in temporary spaces, street works and events, publications, etc.). Both the EMF and IEP grants were discontinued in 1991 due to lack of financial support.

By 1998 a new grant program was initiated: the Independent Projects Grants. Like the IEP, it is intended to encourage and enable artists to find and/or create new situations, new means, and new methods for presenting their work. This grant is available to both individual artists and groups, to help organize and produce self-initiated exhibitions, performances, site-specific works, Internet projects, film and video screenings, and other art events and projects, clearly for their purpose of public presentation in non-commercial, non-institutional venues within the five boroughs of New York City.
Finally, in 1974 Artists Space launched what has since become one of the largest non-curated artists’ registries in the United States, which has served as a model for similar registries around the country, in the Caribbean, Eastern Europe and Australia. First established as the “Unaffiliated Artists File”, the registry was conceived as another way to assist under-recognized and emerging artists as well as to serve as a resource for curators from Artists Space and elsewhere. Throughout its history, Artists Space has regularly organized group exhibitions, titled Selections, in which curators, or already established artists, select artists registered in the Artists File. Officially renamed in 1995 the “Irving Sandler Artists File”, in honor of the numerous and continuing contributions made by Artists Space’s founder and first Board President, it was initially composed solely of unaffiliated, New York’s based artists. Today, while New York-area artists are most heavily represented, many of the File’s more than 3,000 artists are located all over the world. Registration in the Artists File is a free service open to all artists who are not represented by a commercial gallery. The File is also used free of charge by members of the public, most commonly curators (both independent and affiliated), artists, commercial galleries, collectors, students and other non-profit exhibitions spaces. The File is currently an online database accessible via the Artists Space’s website. It also features a virtual exhibition of work selected monthly from the File, the Artists(web)Space.
With all these tools, Artists Space’s function is very relevant today, because it is one of the few places where young, new artists can show in a professional environment: their work gets respect and the proper presentation, including catalogues and announcement cards, which is difficult to obtain when they are just starting out.

“The commercial world has very little contact with the community. There is an obvious sense of arrogance and isolation because they are afraid of being bombarded by artists. That is why they are so distant. As a result, the non profits are able to recognize interesting new work at the earliest stages. In general, if issues surface in New York like AIDS or multiculturalism, the alternative spaces are the first ones to respond by organizing shows that deal with them” (Shirin Neshat in Artists Space’s 25th anniversary yearbook). Artists Space is also a social space and opened its doors to a variety of discussions, events, performances and cultural meetings, organized both in-house and externally. Today it continues to promote and organize these initiatives and to foster an appreciation for the vital and dynamic role that artists play in our communities.

When Artists Say We is the most recent exhibition that took place at the main space of Artists Space, organized by Andrea Geyer and Christian Rattemeyer (Artists Space’s Curator). The exhibitions reflected the context in which artists work as colleagues, as collaborators, in collectives, as friends, as critics, as bystanders, and as allies, sharing New York City as their site of practice.
Artists have always created alliances. The needs that drive artists together are varied: a desire for discourse, a horizon that widens, a complexity of knowledge, the ability to fail, but also the need for shelter and support. Such relationships are grounded in structures and language that are inherently self-critical and rarely reflected upon when art is shown. When Artists Say We took up this task by trying to present in some form the collective exchanges that have taken in New York over the last thirty years. In a way, one could understand these alliances as a necessary precondition which enables artists to do their work. But that does not mean that all art is produced in collaboration, rather, this exhibition suggests that any art – made individually or as a collective – is constituted from within such an exchange.
The exhibition was constituted by four different elements. In the center of the gallery, a mobile archive unit, designed by Nanna Wulfing. It holds materials from approximately 90 New York-based artists, artists group, collectives, and collaborations. To frame the exhibition within an attempt to map historical as well as personal relationships, twelve wall diagrams were commissioned for the surrounding walls. Each charting a particular discourse, relationships, histories, sites and people, as well as the idea that influenced them. Each diagram takes a distinct form: analytical, historical, non-linear, partial, suggestive, indexical. Some of the diagrams invite visitors to continue their mapping. Here is a sample of some of them: Gregg Bordowitz delivers a chart of David Hume’s treatise on the Passions, a personal, intimate reading as much as a commentary on the mechanisms of human emotions and an appeal for passion as the basis of it all. Oui, Sylvia Kolbowski’s class at Cooper Union, produced a wall diagram based on the children’s game Musical Chairs, where a community of contestants whittles down to a single survivor. Here, it could be read as a metaphor for what happens after art school, as the community of the class gets reduced to the single “significant” artist, while the diversity of the group, and its potential for sustaining dialogue and friendship, is rendered absent. Julie Mehretu and Jessica Rankin create a poetic chart of their lives, comprised of influences, residences, and friends. Organized intuitively, rather than following discerning principles, their chart stands out as it touches you in ways that can only be fully understood when shared and is impossible to be explained. Yvonne Rainer contributed a historic letter and diagram that was produced as a response to an article by Arlene Croce published in the New Yorker, and serves as a reminder of the ways in which the writing of history is a subjective and often wilfully distorting operation, as well as an example of an artists taking that act of historiography into her own hands, again. Finally, Mira Schor, contributed a large wall installation created by scanning the covers of some of the many books, journals and ephemera on feminist theory and art that have mattered to her in the past thirty years, to create a kind of personal visualized theoretical and artistic timeline.

Also in five small spaces that surround Artists Space’s main gallery, five artists – Ayreen Anastas, Andrea Geyer, Emily Jacir, Cristòbal Lehyt, and LTTR – each put together an individual group exhibit, mapping the work with which they find themselves in dialogue.
And as a final element, weekly events have been held for the duration of the exhibition (until 29 April), a series of individual events—lectures, conversations, and screenings—present artistic practices that exceed the confines of the exhibition but are considered an integral aspect of its premise.