The Chelsea Art Museum To Host World Photography Organisation Events

Written by Hannibal Gundridge Saturday, 01 October 2011 22:22

New York City.- The Chelsea Art Museum will host the Sony World Photography Awards and the World Photography Organisation (WPO) "New York Events" from October 13th through November 12th. After its highly successful iterations in Shanghai, São Paulo, San Francisco and London, the WPO makes its mark in New York – fittingly in the heart of Chelsea. The Events and Exhibition – which will feature WPO photography competition winners from an open call for both amateur and professional photographers in New York and abroad – celebrates the launch of the exhibition as much as the WPO’s rich history of promoting young students, educators and emerging artists and providing a platform upon which to create, share, and collaborate with one another.

Throughout its rich history, CAM has provided exposure for over 1,000 new and thriving voices of all art disciplines through artist talks, dance performances, musical recitals and more than 150 exhibitions. This project directly supports our mission to deepen and foster new and existing partnerships with other well-established, like-minded cultural institutions such as the London-based WPO, which shares our commitment of highlighting emerging artists in unexpected and groundbreaking ways. The NY Events Schedule includes City Projects and Student Focus, which are comprised of collaborative lectures, critiques, editing workshops and one-on-one sessions with professional and renowned photographers. Students and artists will be encouraged to venture out into the streets and find images that they feel embody the the vibrant and perpetually-evolving streets of New York City. Leading these intimate programs will include internationally-established reportage photographer Jez Coulson, street culture photographer Cheryl Dunn, The New Yorker photographer Steve Pyke and British-based street photographer Nick Turpin. In addition, a juried selection of images produced from City Projects will be displayed in the Museum galleries. The WPO’s In the Photographer’s Studio Artist Talk will feature emerging Argentinean photographer Alejandro Chaskielberg that invites viewers to interact with and discuss the current state of contemporary art and the direction of photography as an art form.


The Chelsea Art Museum (CAM) is located in the heart of Chelsea at 556 West 22nd Street at 11th Avenue. The three-story, red brick building — each floor 10,000 square feet — has large windows with views of the Hudson River and abundant natural light. An open glass staircase joins the gallery spaces. The complete renovation of the building was planned and supervised by Alfredo Caraballude and Michel Morris of the CMA Design Studio. The building, erected in 1850, stands on a parcel of land that was once owned by Clement Clarke Moore, renowned author of “Twas the Night Before Christmas”. In 1915, the Church Temperance Society leased the building as a rest home for longshoremen, many of whom were Irish, Italian or German immigrants working the foreign commerce lines on the Chelsea piers. Longshoremen waiting for shape-ups (work calls) spent hours out doors in all kinds of weather. The only alternative was the saloon. The Rest offered them reading materials, games and light refreshment, provided the men respected the rights of others. A description of the building at the time reported, “Often more than a hundred of the denizens of the waterfront can be seen at one time, reading, sitting about in groups playing games, or formed into circles outside the groups, following the play with words of encouragement or derision” (The Longshoremen by Charles B. Barnes, published by the Russell Sage Foundation). Prior to its renovation CAM housed a factory for Christmas ornaments. The museum is committed to an exploration of “art within a context.”  This approach favors a program of exhibitions which reflect contemporary human experience across a broad spectrum of cultural, social, environmental and geographical contexts. CAM’s exhibitions, each supported by a rich series of related cultural events and educational programs, seek to support in both its artists and audiences a sense of creativity, community and cultural exchange.  Co-founder and President, Dr. Dorothea Keeser, describes CAM’s curatorial vision as, “a commitment to art as a living entity which reacts and interacts with us and changes the way one continues to live one’s daily life”.


In collaboration with a network of museums and visual arts institutions both national and international, CAM seeks to present important, but relatively unexplored dimensions of 20th and 21st Century art, particularly focusing on artists that have been less exposed in the United States than in their home countries. The museum, a 30,000 sq. foot renovated historic building in the heart of Chelsea, is located opposite the piers which served as entry for the arrival and assimilation of foreign cultures into New York.  This location provides a powerful symbol of the museum’s mission: to be a meeting point, a destination for exhibitions and works from Europe, the Americas and Asia and returning CAM generated exhibitions to those partners both overseas and within the United States. CAM also serves as the home of the Miotte Foundation which is dedicated to archiving, preserving, presenting and making available for exhibitions the work of Jean Miotte.  Rotating selections of Miotte’s work are shown on a regular basis, as are selections from the permanent collection which includes rare holdings of such artists as Pol Bury, Mimmo Rotella, and J.P. Riopelle. The Museum also presents film, performance and frequent artist talks and round-tables which seek to foster cross cultural and interdisciplinary debate. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.chelseaartmuseum.org

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