Ed Park, Pippa Garner, jaimie branch, Black Holes, Ghost Streams, and more.

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PW Closure 10/19

Pioneer Works is closed to the public today, October 19, for a Friends of Firefighters event. 

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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. 

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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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 

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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 

Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson hosts landscape architect Kate Orff and architect and design justice pioneer Bryan Lee in a conversation grappling with how we might envision and achieve a thriving future for coastal cities and all who call them home.

So many forces collide around coastal cities—ocean and climate, ecosystems and infrastructure, and millions of people. Dramatic events like hurricanes and incremental events like sea-level rise have demonstrated how tenuous things already are, and what more may come as climate change intensifies. Put simply, coastal cities are unprepared for the impacts of the climate crisis and the stakes are high—but the future is not yet written. Design, technology, collectivism, and nature itself offer a wealth of possibilities. City governments and communities can charge ahead with solutions. ♦

In a conversation grappling with how we might envision and achieve a thriving future for coastal cities and all who call them home, Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson hosts landscape architect Kate Orff and architect and design justice pioneer Bryan Lee.

Coastal Cities

Science & Society grapples with our relationships with nature and each other. Series curator and host Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson guides experts in conversations that lead us deep into humanity’s timely and intersectional challenges, from biodiversity, to plastics, public knowledge, the high seas, farming, climate, and love.

When it comes to climate change, much of our cultural imagery is apocalyptic. The result is that most of us can’t realistically imagine getting it right. And if we can’t imagine possible climate futures, we can’t create them. This is design’s time to shine. Practically and tangibly, design—from buildings and technology, to materials and processes—shapes how we experience and move through the world, what we value and how we interact with it. Given how much the climate has already changed, and how much more change is inevitable, we urgently need design to lead us toward a transformed world.

Salvage punk artist Olalekan Jeyifous and MoMA curator Paola Antonelli join ecologist, policy expert, and Climate Futurism curator Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson to discuss design’s role in addressing the climate crisis. ♦

When it comes to climate change, much of our cultural imagery is apocalyptic. The result is that most of us can’t imagine, realistically, getting it right. And if we can’t imagine possible climate futures, we can’t create them. Salvage punk artist Olalekan Jeyifous and MoMA curator Paola Antonelli join ecologist, policy expert, and Climate Futurism curator Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson to discuss design’s role in addressing the climate crisis. 

Climate Futurism

The Future of Coastal Cities

The quest for short-term profits has been to the detriment of a habitable planet. Mining, overfishing, and clear cutting have led to pollution, extinctions, and loss of nature. By combusting fossil fuels, we’ve gone beyond changing ecology to changing the very chemistry of the atmosphere and ocean. Extractive capitalism has upended our climate. Yet, might it also, given the power of markets, help us find a way forward? 

This moment in human history requires nothing less than transformation—of electricity, transportation, agriculture, buildings—of our relationships to nature and to each other. But we actually have most of the solutions we need, from renewable energy to regenerative farming. Can we implement them at scale within a financial system that maximizes quarterly profits? How might banks, insurance companies, corporations, and the like become an intentional and engaged part of the solution? And what is the role of governments? Of communities? Of artists and storytellers? 

Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson will host journalist and activist Naomi Klein and finance expert Régine Clément, both contributors to the climate anthology All We Can Save, for a conversation grappling with how we might transform our economy in order to address the climate crisis.

Capitalism vs. Climate 

We can’t go back to a world free of plastic pollution. We designed a material that essentially lasts forever, and we throw it away, all day, every day. Each year, 270 million metric tons of plastic (and rising) are produced, and 8 million metric tons (and rising) enter the ocean. There are 500 times more pieces of plastic in the ocean than there are stars in our galaxy. It has infiltrated our food chain—there is plastic in our seafood, sea salt, drinking water, and beer. By 2050 there may be more plastic in the ocean than fish. What is this proliferation doing to ecosystems, society, and our bodies? How can we break our addiction to this modern material convenience?

Our Plastic Problem

The urgency of the climate crisis has permeated public consciousness. How bad might things get? Our fossil-fuel economy has created a global emergency, and the Green New Deal has thrust the issue, and the magnitude of changes needed, to the political forefront. Where does the latest science point us? What are the most promising solutions? And what does our changing climate mean for New York City? Our guests Rhiana Gunn-Wright, a director at New Consensus and policy lead for the Green New Deal, and Dr. Kate Marvel, climate research scientist at NASA and Columbia University, join series host Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Pioneer Works science scholar and founder of Ocean Collectiv, to grapple with the scientific realities of the cultural, governmental, and corporate shifts needed to mitigate our climate crisis.


Our Climate Crisis

Knowledge is power. Power to the people. Knowledge for the people. We live in a world of increasingly digitized, editable, and bifurcating information sources, of exponentially accelerating knowledge production. We live in a world of increasing inequality, and of spin and fabrications finding megaphones so large they spread further than facts. While the terms “open access,” “open source,” and “open data” proliferate, so too do paywalls, patents, and information deemed proprietary. Access to reliable information is fundamental. Experts increasingly find themselves undervalued. The role of libraries is evolving.

Knowledge for the People

We have reached peak fish. Despite fishing farther from shore, in deeper waters, and using ever more high-tech equipment, the global catch has been declining since 1996. Overfishing, habitat destruction, and pollution have rendered a once abundant and healthy food depleted and contaminated. Meanwhile, aquaculture production has increased dramatically, from providing 7% of fish for human consumption in 1974 to 53% in 2016. So what could a future of sustainable seafood look like, both wild and farmed, for a human population approaching 8 billion?