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In a Legacy Obsessed Cultural Landscape, a New Experimental Art Space Is Embracing Ephemerality

“Knowing that the organization itself is temporary can shift the focus away from legacy-building or institutional permanence and toward the urgency of the present moment," times cofounder Summer Guthery told Observer.

Earlier this month, a 3,000-square-foot experimental arts space quietly opened in Lower Manhattan, its ethos guided by an intriguing question: what if not just exhibitions, but institutions were temporary? times, on Lafayette Street, arrives at a moment when the middle of the art ecosystem is thinning out, with optimism increasingly concentrated at the top and bottom ends of the market and institutions favoring novelty and legacy over experimentation. In that widening gap between buzz and critical consecration, times’s founders—Summer Guthery, former director of Canal Projects and co-founder of JOAN, and curator, collector and philanthropist Francesca Sonara—saw a unique opportunity to support artists who, despite widespread institutional inertia, are still taking risks.

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Legacy seeking, Guthery and Sonara believe, is antithetical to experimentation, which is part of why times has a finite lifespan of just three years. “Knowing that the organization itself is temporary can shift the focus… toward the urgency of the present moment,” she said. Freed from the long tail of institutional branding, artists can prioritize immediacy and focus on responding to social, political, ecological and democratic concerns.

Programming opened on February 12 with Jana Jacuka’s HA, a 50-minute solo performance that explores laughter as a survival mechanism in situations where boundaries are crossed through intense, sometimes violent-feeling........

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