Hilton Als on Prince's Eyes, How Adderall Changed America, Sex with Neanderthals, New Fiction by Isle McElroy, Ordering Elements, and more.

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PW Closure 10/25-10/26

Pioneer Works's galleries and garden are closed to the public on Friday, October 25th and Saturday, October 26th for the United Sounds NYC Festival 2024. 

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Own the Archive Sale

This week only, we’re heavily discounting our #PWPress publications to make way for new projects. Find artist-created books for $5, $10, & $15—sales raised from the PW Store are reinvested into funding new, ambitious projects by emerging and underrepresented artists and writers.

Gift Guide

From November 28 through December 14, take 20% off products in the Gift Guide with code: ULTRAFESTIVE. 

Ragas 

Pioneer Works will be closed for normal gallery hours this October 14 & 15 for Ragas Live Festival 2023, learn more 

June closing

Please note, Pioneer Works will be closed for daily admissions until July 7th. We 

open for ticketed programs, view our calendar 

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Celebrate 10 years of Pioneer Works by shopping the PW Press Archive Sale! Through October 31, take 10% off Pioneer Works Press items with code 

Flash Flood Closures

Building Closures Due to Flash Floods

Due to weather conditions, Pioneer Works is suspending open gallery hours for Friday, September 29. MHYSA's performance has been rescheduled for Sunday, October 1, with all tickets being transferred to the new date.

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Shop the PW Store Spring Sale!

 for the entire month of April and receive an automatic 20% off books, records, apparel, and more. Members save 35%—learn more about membership 

Aura Closure 5/27

Please note:

 will close early at 5pm on Saturday, May 27. Learn more and plan your visit 

CEO Announcement

Just Announced: Pioneer Works Names Mara Manus Chief Executive Officer

The Board of Directors of Pioneer Works is pleased to announce that Mara Manus, former Executive Director for New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), has been appointed as the organization’s new Chief Executive Officer. 

We are grateful for your engagement and support of Pioneer Works over the last year. Now through December 31st, we’re fundraising to meet our end of year goal and close out 2024.

85% of our programming is free or accessibly-priced and we rely on our community of supporters to make that possible. Give now to ensure that we can continue nurturing artists and audiences through 2025.


Support our Annual Appeal

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PW Closed 11/11

We're closed all day Friday, November 11 for our annual Village Fête Benefit. To learn more about the After Party and get tickets, visit 

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Let Pioneer Works come to you                                    

Our galleries and garden are closed to the public today for a United Sounds NYC Festival 2024. Learn more about the festival 

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We’re making Pioneer Works accessible to all! While our building is temporarily closed until this September, we are continuing to host offsite programming. See upcoming programs 

PW Newsletter

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 takes place at PW to celebrate this digital experiment and the artists, scientists, musicians, writers, and readers who’ve made it possible. RSVP 

Aura Closure 6/3

 will close early at 5pm on Saturday, June 3. Learn more and plan your visit 

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We're pleased to announce the first major renovation of Pioneer Works! To accommodate the first phase of our construction, we're temporarily relocating to 133 Imlay Street opening in Spring 2022.

Early Closure 5/10/23

Due to programming, Pioneer Works will be closed to the public on Wednesday, May 10. We will be open from Thursday through Sunday for the remainder of the week. Learn more and plan your visit 

Winter Break Closure

Pioneer Works will be closed between December 16, 2024–January 24, 2025 for a winter break.

Famed primatologist Frans de Waal and marine mammal scientist and cognitive psychologist Diana Reiss joined our director of sciences Janna Levin in conversation to explore the possibilities of animal consciousness.

Animal Consciousness

Are there Many Worlds? Does Time Exist? Are We Alone? Hosted by Director of Sciences Janna Levin, the Scientific Controversies series brings creative minds together to celebrate the passionate spirit of scientific curiosity. Previous guests include Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek, geneticist George Church, and neuroscientist Christof Koch with subjects ranging from artificial intelligence and string theory, to dark matter, consciousness, and other unsolved scientific quandaries.

Black holes are gloriously weird. Formed as the death state of heavy stars, they can be as small as cities or as big as solar systems. Our own Milky Way galaxy is anchored at its center by a black hole four million times the mass of our sun but only 20 sun widths across. The rest of our galaxy could harbor billions of city-sized black holes. There are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the observable universe, each one replete with billions of stellar mass black holes and each one probably the home to one supermassive black hole. Beyond the oddity of black holes, they may play an essential role in sculpting galaxies and the universe on the largest scales. Black holes may have carved a world that we could live in.



Black Holes

Scientific Controversies: Black Holes

Our perception of the material world is famously illusory. Nothing is solid. On closer inspection, all things resolve into a long list of fundamental particles, microscopic billiard balls subject to quantum forces. The list of known particles is disappointingly long – a cocktail with too many ingredients in a universe that promised elegance. String Theory attempts to restore elegance by unifying the multitude of ingredients into one. The essential idea: There are no particles, only vibrating loops of string. If true, then all the different quantum particles are just different harmonics played on fundamental strings. So is the entire universe a complex score played out on elementary strings? Or are we lost, distracted by the pursuit of an ideal beauty that the universe simply doesn’t possess?

Listen to the captivating conversation between Nobel laureate and string theory pioneer David Gross, theoretical physicist Clifford Johnson, and Director of Sciences Janna Levin.


String Theory

Scientific Controversies: String Theory

Black holes could have been relegated to mathematics and remained a physical absurdity. They were the outcome of a thought experiment, a fantastical imagining. Imagine matter crushed to a point. Don’t ask how. Just imagine that. But nature thought of a way to make them by killing off massive stars. These dead stars collapse under their own weight so catastrophically that even light gets dragged down the hole, casting a shadow on the sky. That shadow is the event horizon, left behind while the stellar material continues to fall to an unknown fate. For the first time in human history, we have seen a black hole. The image was captured by Event Horizon Telescope, a composite telescope the size of the whole Earth.

Join Pioneer Works Director of Sciences and black-hole astrophysicist, Janna Levin, alongside Dr. Sheperd Doeleman, Director of the Event Horizon Telescope, and theoretical physicist Prof. Andrew Strominger to consider the staggering implications of event horizons from astrophysics to the theory of everything.

Scientific Controversies: Animal Consciousness

Scientific Controversies