This summer, ArtYard presents a season of exhibitions, performances, and community programs exploring transformation, embodiment, and collective experience through contemporary art. From immersive visual installations and genre-defying live performance to participatory programs that open the creative process to the public, the season brings artists and audiences into shared creative encounters.
This fall, ArtYard celebrates its 10th anniversary, marking a decade of presenting bold interdisciplinary work and building a creative home for artists and audiences along the Delaware River with its inaugural Tin Anniversary Gala on Nov. 7. Additional anniversary initiatives will be announced throughout the season, including the launch of a new membership program.
We’re excited to announce the opening of five exhibitions this summer that move between the visceral and the deeply personal, bringing together artists who transform material, memory, and perception into immersive encounters.
In Phantom Limbs, Argentine-American artist Tamara Kostianovsky, known for her intricate sculptural installations carefully constructed from discarded textiles, creates fabric-based forms that merge human forms with landscape, unfolding into a surreal, dystopian jungle. This site-specific installation positions the body as both a product and extension of the earth — a living outgrowth of the planet — and as a vertical conduit linking the terrestrial and the celestial.
A Divine Comedy is a solo exhibition featuring works by David Bailin spanning 35 years. Known for his expressive, figurative compositions. Bailin’s large-scale drawings on milk carton overstock are charged, theatrical spaces where narrative and symbolism intertwine, inviting viewers into cycles of descent, reckoning, and transformation. Other works are excavations marked by layers of erasures that conjure the disappearance of a loved one in a fog of dementia.
In Vanishing Point Forever, Michael Angelo Mangino constructs spatially complex paintings that hover between landscape and abstraction. Through layered color and evocative, fragmented sentences, his works suggest shifting horizons and aerial perspectives, creating immersive environments that feel both expansive and disorienting.
With Mom Bras, Cassie Arnold transforms the utilitarian art of knitting into sculptural works that are at once intimate, humorous, and quietly defiant. Rooted in her exploration of the body, motherhood, and lived experience, Arnold reconfigures an intimate garment into forms that challenge cultural expectations while remaining grounded in the physical realities they reference.
At Rest features work by artist Rebecca Reeves in our Very Small Galleries, three apertures hidden in our gallery walls. The exhibition explores the fragile space between life and death through hand-beaded flowers that embody decay and preservation.
The exhibitions open with a free public reception on the evening of Saturday, June 27, followed by artist talks with David Bailin and Tamara Kostianovsky on Sunday, June 28.
ArtYard’s live performance season brings together an eclectic mix of artists working across music, dance, theater, and performance art, offering experiences that are as inventive as they are immediate. The lineup includes grassroots rock band Seratones (July 25), two-time Latin Grammy–winning producer, songwriter, and trumpeter Ella Bric (October 9), and HUG (October 10), the new collaborative project from Devendra Banhart, Gyan Riley, and Noah Georgeson. Weirdo Night, hosted by “crackpot genius” Jibz Cameron (aka Dynasty Handbag) with Illustrious Pearl, HAAGS, Francesca D’Uva, and Claywoman, comes to ArtYard for one night only in a rescheduled performance on Aug. 15.
Highlights include:
- Joseph Keckler returns on Saturday, July 11 to host a summer edition of The Golden Hour, his signature variety show featuring a lineup of bold, genre-defying performers. The evening includes Simon Hanes, hailed by The New York Times as an “anarchic young composer,” and his ensemble Tsons of Tsunami, whose sound blends psychedelic surf rock with downtown experimentation.
- On Thursday, July 23, NYC duo Xn0rmL, poet Mark Svenvold and musician/producer Ted Sabety, present You, Me and the Algorithmic Sea, a sharp, funny, and slightly unnerving genre-blending performance described as a comedy about intelligence — artificial and otherwise.
- On Friday, September 25, KEIGWIN + COMPANY presents Stage Door, a community-driven performance that blends professional dancers with local participants. Created by Artistic Director Larry Keigwin and Co-Choreographer Nicole Wolcott, the work expands on their acclaimed duet Places Please. Through the lens of the audition process, the performance explores themes of acceptance, aging, and belonging with moments that are both playful and unexpectedly moving.
- On Friday, Oct. 2, Dom Flemons Presents The Bronze Buckaroo Film & Songster Show comes to Frenchtown. The American Songster and co-founder and original member of the GRAMMY-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops joins us to share the captivating history of Black Cowboys and the roots of American music through an innovative concert experience.
ArtYard’s community programs invite audiences to engage more deeply with the creative process, offering opportunities to step inside the work, the spaces, and the ideas that shape it.
Mom Bras artist Cassie Arnold will offer Weaving through Grief on Saturday, Aug. 1 to invite the community to remember loved ones by turning their T-shirts into a satchel to hold tiny memories. The workshop is designed to allow your mind to slow down, focus, and reflect while making something with your hands, and to do this work alongside others who have faced similar losses, helping us feel less alone.
Our Thursday night Drawing Nights resume July 2 through Sept. 17 inside the exhibition Phantom Limbs. Community members are invited to bring a friend and a snack to share and savor the act of slowing down, paying attention to the scene in front of you, and unleashing your creativity among fellow art-lovers, no critiques given. Materials are provided.
The third and final Creative Movement: Dance with Me workshop series is 11 AM on Wednesdays, Sept. 30 to Nov. 4. A playground for creative movement, dance, and joyful self-discovery, Michael Sazonov leads adults 55 and older through somatic movement, dance, and theatre games, accentuating improvisation, the spoken word, and the expressive body during this six-week workshop.
From May through November, monthly Campus Tours open the doors to ArtYard’s four-building campus in Frenchtown. Tours are held at 11 AM on the first Sunday of each month.
Finally, we’re excited to announce Baby-Wearing Dance, a new class for new parents to feel the joy of movement and connect with other parents and their babies at 11 AM on Thursdays, June 4 to 25. Led by Michael Sazonov, Baby-Wearing Dance is a place where parents and their babies can enjoy timeless tunes and good grooves in a fun, feel-good, and creative environment. Designed for baby-wearing new parents and their babies (0-8 months), these 30-minute dance sessions are the perfect way to move your body, connect with your baby, spark more joy in your day, and create community through joy and creative self-expression.
We hope to see you soon. Get a last look at our spring exhibitions and celebrate with us at a closing reception on Sunday, May 31 or experience An Evening with Ayodele Casel in the McDonnell Theater!
