Park Avenue Armory

There may be a million music venues hidden underground or in well-established locales, and another million art galleries nestled around the city, but what about a combination of the two? Although they are few and far between, and often in Brooklyn where there’s a little more space, more and more visual and performing art collectives are popping up around the city and offering creative spaces for artists and the general public alike. 

Some of these venues are immersive experiences, offering live performances alongside or within art exhibitions, while others maintain a more community oriented, art collective feel. The Kitchen, Chelsea’s over 40-year-old nonprofit artist collective, is one such space that seeks to foster and share artistic work ranging from music, dance, theater, and performance to art, video, film, and literary events. Out in Ridgewood, there is Trans-Pecos, a space that is part-venue, part-community center and focused entirely on inclusivity, representation, and creativity across all artistic platforms. Those locations, however, are just a sampling of existing spaces you can find around the city:

1. Silent Barn, Bushwick

Silent Barn first appeared in Ridgewood in 2006 as an underground performance collective, but moved to 603 Bushwick Avenue in Bushwick in 2012 where it grew into a community art collective and performance space. Focused on experimentation and interaction, it “is home to a complex of studio and living spaces which serve as an experimental sandbox and public platform for a variety of individual artistic, cultural, and entrepreneurial projects.”

Their living and working “stewdios” allow artists to inhabit the spaces they work in and collaborate with one another in shared spaces. The interior and exterior “yard” areas enable artists to perform live music, curate exhibitions, and create public art (or “barn art”) that is not made within their “stewdio” spaces.