A living archive preserving history and promoting scholarship of grassroots urban space activism by researching and archiving efforts to create community spaces. They also exhibit materials that document these actions, to educate people on the political implications of reclaimed space.

Favorite black corner of Williamsburg

In 1963, the Italian-born sculptor Costantino Nivola filled a playground that covers an entire city block with avant-garde abstractions. In the middle of an Upper Manhattan housing project, there are cuboid cutouts sculpted in cement, a fountain made with two diamond-shaped boulders, concrete play horses, and a sand-casted relief carved high into a wall. In the northeast corner, a matriarchal figure known as “The Nanny” rises from the ground. The artist’s sculptures were built in an era when urban development incorporated art in its effort to uplift communities and express democratic ideals. “A work designed for a public space is less a work of art than a civic act,” Nivola once said. “It concerns the ways in which we live together, and in which we influence each other.”

Always beautifully curated shows in a whitewashed space. The work is juxtaposed with the bustling China Town backdrop, adding a dose of life and grit compared to the other often hyper sterile art spaces around the world.

This place, so good. Great uzbek food. All one really needs in life