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GHENT, NY — Art Omi presents Staging Area: A Barn Raising in Two Parts by designer Erin Besler. Part One of Staging Area will open on March 15, 2025, inside the Newmark Gallery at Art Omi.
Few structures have been as intensely labored over as the barn. From community raising weekends and feminist pedagogical projects to back-to-the land conversions and acts of preservation across the rural United States, barns are sites where commonly held distinctions break down: between amateur participants and expert practitioners, nature and culture, individuals and collectives, manual trades and intellectual pursuits, and the discipline of architecture and the practice of building.
While American barns are often tied to romantic myths of isolation, self-sufficiency, and pragmatism, Besler invites their audience to consider the social possibilities embedded in the construction site. The collective efforts of barn raisings emphasize exchange, skill sharing, and more ubiquitous building practices that foster systems of reciprocity and community over individualism and profit.
Staging Area unfolds through an ongoing, layered program of events. Part One of Staging Area will open on March 15, 2025 inside the Newmark Gallery at Art Omi. Throughout the show, visitors are invited to join in social gatherings, site-specific interventions, and creative activities, including raising suppers, barn model workshops, and lumber parades.
Part Two, taking place in Summer 2025, will feature an outdoor installation of a barn frame in the Sculpture and Architecture Park at Art Omi in partnership with Build Hudson. Staged as a public raising, the event will celebrate the barn as a site of communal and shared labor, bringing together participants and visitors to work collaboratively.
Staging Area: A Barn Raising in Two Parts is curated by Julia van den Hout, Senior Architecture Curator, with Guy Weltchek, Curatorial Assistant.
Join us at Art Omi in Ghent, New York on Saturday, March 15 from 1-3 PM for Raising Supper, the opening of Staging Area: A Barn Raising in Two Parts.
Advanced registration is appreciated, please RSVP below.
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ERIN BESLER
Erin Besler (she/they) is a co-founder of Besler & Sons, a studio that designs buildings, software, objects, exhibitions, and interiors. Erin’s interests focus on architecture as a collective project, exploring the social, pedagogical, and material aspects of construction, social media, and other means of producing and sharing content that rely less on expertise and more on ubiquity. Their work has been recognized by the Architectural League of New York, a United States Artists Fellowship, the Rome Prize in Architecture, and the Graham Foundation. They have exhibited internationally, including at the Tallinn Architecture Biennial, MODEL Barcelona Architecture Festival, the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, the Art Institute of Chicago, and Shenzhen and Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Architecture/Urbanism as part of the group exhibition “Now, There,” which was awarded the UABB Bronze Award. Erin’s collaborative design work and writing have been published widely in e-flux, Future Anterior, Perspecta, Log, PLOT. Alongside practice,
Erin teaches at Princeton University in the School of Architecture.
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ART OMI
Art Omi supports international artists across disciplines, serving as a lab space that nurtures and commissions forward-thinking projects in nascent stages of development and catalyzes expanded contexts for significant works due for critical reappraisal. A non-profit arts center in New York’s Hudson Valley, Art Omi welcomes visitors to experience the intersections of art and nature in our 120-acre Sculpture & Architecture Park, free of charge. With more than sixty works in a bucolic setting of rolling farmlands, wetlands, and woodlands, and rotating exhibitions in our Newmark Gallery, Art Omi invites the public and the artistic community alike to celebrate the transformative quality of art.
Art Omi offers residency programs for international artists, architects, dancers, musicians, writers, and translators, hosting more than 2,000 artists from over 100 countries since our founding in 1992.
Art Omi engages with our local community through a thriving arts education program, beloved by families and children.
Follow Art Omi on Instagram, Facebook, and on artomi.org
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