Our third print issue features Catherine Lacey on worthless pictures; Elif Batuman on Miranda July; Chris Kraus on girlhood; the drawings of Daniel Johnston; poems by Ariana Reines and Eileen Myles; and dispatches on undersea rifts, baby-making on Mars, and climbing Stone Mountain. 

Let Pioneer Works come to you. Subscribe to our newsletter to be the first to hear about upcoming events and releases. 

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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's galleries and garden will be closed this Sunday, October 19 for Ragas Live Festival 2025. 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.

April PW Store Banner

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 

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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Pioneer Works will be closed on May 15 & 16, 2026 for a private event. 

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

Deinstall Closure

Early Closure

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 

Our galleries and garden are currently closed for installation. We will reopen on 

Friday, September 12, 2025, from 7–9 PM

Raúl de Nieves, Tega Brain, and Sam Lavigne

In this animated short, Nobel Laureate David Baltimore muses over the human implications of genetic engineering. ♦

In this animated short, Nobel Laureate David Baltimore muses over the human implications of genetic engineering.

Genetic Engineering

Created in partnership with Massive Science, Condensed Matters is an audiovisual series and archive of complex scientific ideas made small. 

On the 29th of May, 1919 the moon eclipsed the sun to allow a thin ray of light from the Hyades star cluster to fall into Sir Arthur Eddington’s telescopes. Through his observations, he proved that light did not travel on straight lines around the sun, but rather on curved ones that deflected light. Eddington's announcement made headlines, catapulting Einstein’s fame in the English-speaking world. ♦

On the 29th of May, 1919 the moon eclipsed the sun to allow a thin ray of light from the Hyades star cluster to fall into Sir Arthur Eddington’s telescopes. Through his observations, he proved that light did not travel on straight lines around the sun, but rather on curved ones that deflected light. Eddington's announcement made headlines, catapulting Einstein’s fame in the English-speaking world.

The Eclipse That Made Einstein Famous

Janna Levin on the Eclipse That Made Einstein Famous

In this episode of Condensed Matters, cognitive neuroscientist Elizaveta Solomonova talks about the complicated boundaries between different states of consciousness such as dreaming and wakefulness. 

In this beautiful visual rumination on her words by animators Brian Smee and Isabelle Aspin, we are transported into dream states and waking nightmares, transposed onto waking realities. ♦

Cognitive neuroscientist Elizaveta Solomonova talks about the complicated boundaries between different states of consciousness such as dreaming and wakefulness.

Elizaveta Solomonova on Consciousness and Dreaming

This animated short, produced by Massive, was created in collaboration with Scientific Controversies No.15: Black Holes hosted by our Director of Sciences Janna Levin with guests, Yale professor and astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan and the University of Arizona professor and astrophysicist Feryal Özel, on July 26, 2018. ♦

In this animated short produced by Massive Science, astrophysicists Priyamvada Natarajan and Feryal Özel discuss the origins and importance of black holes.

Black Holes

Priyamvada Natarajan & Feryal Özel on Black Holes

Dark matter is a mysterious, ethereal substance that makes up over 25 percent of the mass-energy of the universe (for comparison, the stuff we can see and interact with only comprises about 5 percent) but has only been measured obliquely by its effects on the matter around it. It is essentially invisible, and conceptual metaphors seem to be the method of choice for explaining what, exactly, dark matter is. Since our understanding of dark matter is in flux, and our measurements of dark matter are difficult to visualize, we thought that the most novel way to represent it would be to move away from the literal universe and into an animated one. ♦

Nearly 25% of the universe’s content hides in an unknown form: Dark Matter. Despite decades of effort to detect dark matter, the substance eludes us. In this animated short, Janna Levin considers the question: What Is Dark Matter?

Dark Matter

Janna Levin on Dark Matter

We are biological machines, a naturally evolved intelligence bound in carbon and water. Our ambition to create an Artificial Intelligence in metal and silicon is probably unstoppable. We have already built machines vastly more capable at raw computations and data processing than our minds. But machines can’t recognize a face, reproduce, or learn unassisted. We can. Will machines ever exceed us in consciousness and willfulness? Would we be able to comprehend their minds and thoughts and motives if they do? Will they be malevolent? 

Max Tegmark, Director of the Future of Life Institute and MIT professor, considers if humanity’s role in evolution will be to initiate the era of Artificial Intelligence at the peril of our own species. ♦

In this animated short, Max Tegmark, Director of the Future of Life Institute and MIT professor, considers if humanity’s role in evolution will be to initiate the era of Artificial Intelligence at the peril of our own species. 

Artificial Intelligence

Max Tegmark on Artificial Intelligence

Every star, every pebble, every galaxy, every person, the oceans and the moon, the hundreds of billions of galaxies—every thing anyone anywhere has ever seen or will ever see in sum total amounts to less than 5% of the composition of the universe. Overwhelmingly, the universe is dominated by a form of invisible energy that permeates space—Dark Energy. We cannot see the energy although we live in an all-pervasive invisible dark sea. We do not know its origin or what it’s made of, if it will last forever, or evaporate in some far future. Though invisible, its dark presence is inferred as the unexpected source powering the ever-faster expansion of our universe. Dominant and everywhere, Dark Energy might be no more than the energy of nothing, an inescapable energy of empty spacetime.

In this animated short, cosmologist Pedro Ferreira considers the most pressing question facing cosmology: What is Dark Energy? ♦

In this animated short, cosmologist Pedro Ferreira considers the most pressing question facing cosmology: What Is Dark Energy?

Dark Energy

Pedro Ferreira on Dark Energy

In this animated short, data and behavioral researcher Simon Garnier and biologist and entomologist Corrie Moreau discuss the peculiar emergence of swarm behavior in the natural world.

David Baltimore on Genetic Engineering

Condensed Matters