Press

This year’s lineup, which kicked off this weekend with a rousing performance by Pardon My French!, includes a powerhouse of talented artists whose music styles range from soul to Western swing and classical to indigenous roots.

ArtYard is excited to announce four unique exhibitions that open this winter — Paul Bowen: Drift, featuring sculptures of wood and found materials; As Is, a selection of unauthored objects from the world of art without intent; Shoes, A Love Story, an assembly of shoes that hint at mysterious and beguiling narratives; and Michael Mangino: Paint, a solo exhibition of recent works by a Studio Route 29 artist.

A theater troupe formed by Ukrainian actors in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of the country will present a new performance exploring motherland at ArtYard’s McDonnell Theater in November.

ArtYard is delighted to support the launch of Studio Route 29, a progressive art studio for artists with developmental and intellectual disabilities, which opens this fall at our former gallery at 62A Trenton Ave.

ArtYard will host a press preview from 4 to 6 PM on Saturday, Sept. 17 for Landscape and Hierarchies, a solo exhibition featuring new works by Alexandre Arrechea, before its opening to visitors.

ArtYard is thrilled to present Landscape and Hierarchies, a solo exhibition featuring new works by Alexandre Arrechea opening with a reception at 6 PM on Saturday, Sept. 17 in Frenchtown, NJ.

All are invited to join in the procession alongside the Ocean Avenue Stompers and Miracle Tapestries Project

ArtYard is pleased to present Ecstatic Decrepitude, an exhibition featuring works by Bread and Puppet Founder Peter Schumann.

ArtYard is pleased to announce its partnership with the Baryshnikov Arts Center for a residency program to support the development of new work that launches in March with Company SBB // Stefanie Batten Bland.

Three years after breaking ground on our new building at 13 Front Street and 10 months after welcoming the first visitors to our galleries, we are thrilled to announce the opening month of programming at the McDonnell Theater.

ArtYard is pleased to present Invisible, an exhibition curated by Jill Kearney featuring the work of twelve artists whose practices examine omitted histories, imperceptible forces, and unspoken narratives which render that which is apparent, misleading, or incomplete.

Curated by Robin Hill and Ulla Warchol / BiolunarL, Going to the Meadow is a living exhibition, staged in four parts, and borrows a musical term to examine the essence of collaboration at this moment in time.

It gives us great pleasure to announce a new addition to the ArtYard campus. This May we closed on the beautiful and iconic building at 12 Bridge Street, once known as the Apgar House

ArtYard, a nonprofit contemporary art center, is set to open its newly completed 21,000-square-foot home with two floors of exhibition space and a 162-seat state-of-the-art theater at a ceremony on May 1. This interdisciplinary art center is located in Frenchtown, NJ, a beguiling small town perched at the Delaware River’s edge within a little more than an hour’s drive of Philadelphia and New York that features bike paths, hiking trails, historic hotels, farm-to-table restaurants, and an emerging art scene.

(5/14/2023) Paul Bowen: Drift "a beautifully installed exhibition with some magical moments." Some works suggest a narrative and seem to be in a moment of arrested movement. Flyer, hung just above eye level, confronts us with a muscley vertical element that slices the space into tilting and leaning towards us. It gives a little jolt and uplift and a slight sense of menace like the feeling one gets standing at the bow of a very large ship at dock, foreboding and majestic as it bobs with the waves

(5/11/23) ArtYard has selected TyLie Shider as the inaugural recipient of the ArtYard Playwright Fellowship. Shider will spend nine months in residency at ArtYard developing new work, working closely with ArtYard artistic and technical staff and guest theatre curator Deonté Griffin-Quick.

(5/1/23) Lance Weiler is an A.I. convert. His art students at Columbia University are still debating the creative value of ChatGPT and Midjourney. Powerful tools or a crutch?

(4/27/23) Shoes, A Love Story invites viewers to consider footwear as autobiography, activism, and socioeconomic commentary. The well-worn shoes range from embroidered silk slippers to steel-and-leather polio braces, from oversized clown feet to woven straw clogs

(3/9/23) The actor-model-author-farmer plays “dogs, cats, chickens, peacocks, and, of course, Charles Darwin,” in a comedic meditation on art and science. It plays at Frenchtown's ArtYard this weekend.

(3/8/23) This exhibition invites viewers to question their notions of beauty, artistry, and materiality. On view in Frenchtown, New Jersey.

(3/8/2023) You can learn a lot from Isabella Rossellini’s new one-woman show. But “Darwin’s Smile” — the Emmy nominee’s meditation on empathy and its intersection with acting and the study of animal behavior — is certainly not a lecture.

(3/9/23) “It’s really nice for people with disabilities to have a place where they’re celebrated for who they are instead of trying to fix them or make them fit into society in a way that they’re not."

(2/18/23) A Flemington resident's artwork will be featured at a new exhibition at ArtYard, in Frenchtown, this season, beginning Saturday. Valerie Huhn, of Flemington, and David Horowitz, of Frenchtown, have created works in "Shoes, A Love Story."

(2/8/2023) Studio Route 29 is a new art studio for people with developmental and intellectual disabilities. It offers classes, programming, and open work time.

(12/15/2022) Interdisciplinary artist Sebastienne Mundheim takes on the work of Kea Tawana in workshops and upcoming performance at ArtYard.

(11/21/22) Alexandre Arrechea en la conjura del agua y el silencio

(11/4/22) A group of Ukrainian performers were set to put on a show at ArtYard in Frenchtown Friday and Saturday night. "Mothermotherland" will be followed by talkback events where the audience can ask the cast questions.

(October 2022) A founding member of the Cuban Collective, Los Carpinteros, international artist Alexandre Arrechea creates a new exhibition at ArtYard in Frenchtown, NJ. We meet the artist during his residency there as he creates monumental work, including a watercolor made with water drawn from the nearby Delaware River. Curator Elsa Mora describes how growing up in Cuba affected Arrechea’s work.

(October 2022) Live music at ArtYard

(September 2022) ArtYard inaugurated the new exhibition by Cuban artist Alexandre Arrechea. LANDSCAPE AND HIERARCHIES explores the relationship between the individual and the collective, and the domino effect that human actions may have on society and nature.

(8/31/22) A month-by-month visual guide to the museum exhibitions and art events you should check out in New York City this season.

(9/21/2022) Studio Route 29 will begin accepting applications on a first-come, first-serve basis for those with development and intellectual disabilities.

(8/1/2022) Peter Schumann's philosophy has been explored recently at ArtYard in Frenchtown, New Jersey, through an installation of masks, puppets, books, paper mâché relief work, and paintings conveying his deep commitment to the creative and political work which unites artists and communities in celebration and protest. The installation featured historic never-before displayed woodcuts, brand new giant books, and paintings in black and white plus giant paper mâché sculpture, sweeping multi-chrome paintings, masks and objects.

(7/21/2022) The Hatch, a raucous and exuberant celebration of creative incubation and community, featured the brass band Ocean Avenue Stompers, a dozen artists led by Laura Bernstein who unfurled their 100-foot-long Miracle Tapestry Project, and a parade of friendly locals dressed as birds bringing merriment through downtown Frenchtown

(7/7/2022) ArtYard is hosting a Film Festival of Joy, July 13-17, featuring a diverse selection of shorts, features, silent films, cartoons and documentaries. Filmmakers will be there to answer audience questions, and the fest wraps up with a gospel performance by the Paterson-based group Anointed Friends.

(7/1/2022) On Saturday, June 25, ArtYard in Frenchtown invited guests to its fifth annual “Hatch” event. The event is ArtYard’s “joyful celebration of creative incubation.”

(6/13/2022) A recent reading of TyLie Shider’s play ‘Whittier,’ about the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, brought together artists intent on sustaining the energy of the past 2 years of protest.

(6/7/2022) “‘Ecstatic Decrepitude’ is presented on two stories,” Bread and Puppet Theater founder Peter Schumann writes of his exhibition at ArtYard in Frenchtown, New Jersey, from April 30 to July 31, 2022.

(6/3/2022) These days, Frenchtown is in the midst of a major revival, with an active budding art scene anchored by ArtYard, a contemporary art and performance center that opened in May of last year. While this is bringing in a new wave of visitors, Frenchtown has enjoyed a huge underlying current of local hometown pride right from the start. From annual events like Bastille Day, to River Fest, to the Frenchtown Mermaid Parade, it’s a town brimming with love for their river, community, and visitors alike.

(5/27/2022) ArtYard was designed for immersion. The galleries in this Frenchtown arts center are big enough to dry-dock a boat in. It’s the sort of place that encourages installations, rather than exhibitions. Instead of an array of pictures on a wall, waiting there to be apprehended, the Yard brims over with art. Its curators invite visitors to plunge in. The refurbished theater is impressive to behold — it’s right on the banks of a beautiful bend in the Delaware River — and it requires visions to match its dimensions. The ArtYard whispers to creators: Use every square inch of these galleries. Take advantage of the wide walls and high ceilings. Make a fantasy world.

(5/15/2022) This Saturday, May 21, theatergoers are invited to join ArtYard in Frenchtown for a reading of Whittier, a new docudrama by TyLie Shider. Whittier is a neighborhood in Minneapolis, close to where the murder of George Floyd took place. Shider’s new play follows residents of Whittier grappling with that tragedy, as well as the stresses of life during the lockdown of 2020.

(4/9/2022) Arthur Vint & Associates bring a unique jazz-influenced cinematic sound to ArtYard Frenchtown Saturday, April 9 at 8pm. Arthur Vint and ArtYard concert curator and owner of the Frenchtown Bookshop Scott Sheldon join WBGO Journal host Douglas Doyle to talk about the multi-media event that will feature sounds from the late composer Ennio Morricone, including The Good The Bad and The Ugly starring jazz lover Clint Eastwood Fans.

(3/7/2022) With experience hosting more than 250 theater, poetry, dance, music and film events, ArtYard in Frenchtown has become a cultural epicenter since it opened five years ago along the Delaware River. But now, the curtain is up at 13 Front St.

(3/7/2022) Mandee Hammerstein interviews with ArtYard’s Communications Manager Meghan Van Dyk. Mandee and Meghan dive into the opening act for ArtYard’s much anticipated McDonnell Theater opening on March 3rd, headlining with Multi-Award-Winning Hip Hop Artist Supaman.

(3/2/2022) With exhibitions, performances, residencies, and workshops, ArtYard welcomes the chance to make sense of an otherwise senseless world

(1/20/2022) ArtYard in Frenchtown, N.J., opened its first exhibition of the new year, “Invisible,” on Jan. 15. Curated by Jill Kearney, “Invisible” explores what the author Svetlana Alexievich calls “the missing history – the invisible imprint of our stay on Earth and in time.”

(1/13/2022) ArtYard in Frenchtown has been around for five years, but 2022 is set to be its most exciting year yet. The nonprofit has expanded to become a hub for creation and collaboration.

(7/14/2021) His service is so well-known throughout the borough that he was even included in a 2018 exhibition at the ArtYard that paid tribute to Frenchtown.

(5/3/2021) The founder and executive director of a renowned contemporary arts center in New Jersey is guided by an overarching mission: to incubate creative expression and catalyze collaborations that reveal the transformational power of art to the greatest extent that she can.

(3/2/2020) ArtYard is a treasure. Founded by Jill Kearney and Stephen McDonnell in 2016, the Frenchtown center is rapidly fulfilling the original vision and becoming a world-class center for the arts.

(11/8/2019) “It’s going to be a major transformational item for our downtown," Myhre said. “I think it’s going to be a big driver of tourism and visitors, and it’s going to really revitalize a whole area of town that was previously occupied by two vacant buildings that they took down.”

(3/29/2019) The Creative Commons is remarkable, not just because the work is so good, but because what it represents is so new.

(8/15/2018) The Frenchtown community is doing all that they can to help get a couple who lost everything in a fire get back on their feet.

(6/23/2017) The exhibition "Ordinary Obsessions" will feature drawings, sculptures, installations and video works. Both artists looked at everyday objects for inspiration in creating thought-provoking work.

(3/17/2017) For the past three months, members of the Frenchtown, New Jersey community have been sharing their wishes anonymously with the neighborhood gallery ArtYard. An art installation made from the collected wishes will be on display in the exhibit "Through the Unfrequented Sky." Those who view the piece, which resembles a cloud, are asked to look for repeated wishes.