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NS Irish Arts CenterA New York nonprofit dedicated to advocating the culture of Irish and Irish-Americans is finally moving into a home as big as its aspirations.
Organization, Founded in the East Village in 1972has been in business for decades in a one-off condo in Hell’s Kitchen. Now, completing a pandemic-delayed construction project that went into operation 15 years ago, the center is just around the corner from December, after transforming a long-running tire shop into a state-of-the-art performance facility it’s aiming for. , theater, dance, music, visual arts and more.
Ireland “still has these incredibly deep roots in its artistic heritage and still feels like a land of poets in its sensibility and storytelling,” said Aidan Connolly, the centre’s managing director. However, “New Yorkers may not know how exciting the emerging contemporary dance scene in Ireland is; They may not know how Ireland’s cultural evolution over the past 20 years has produced an exciting, dynamic, more diverse generation of musical artists.”
On 11th Avenue, the four-story, 21,700-square-foot building, which retains its original brick garage facade, houses at its center, a black box theater space with 14 approved configurations, the largest of which can seat 199. The theater is a significant technological upgrade for the center, with retractable seating, flexible lighting, sound and set hardware, overhead wire tension grid, and digital capture and streaming capability.
The ground floor of the building features a blackened steel paneled cafe and a walnut bar to be operated by. Ardesia, a local wine bar. Above and below the theater are rooms that can be used for training and community programs, as well as rehearsals and meetings.
Designed by $60 million building Davis Brody Bond’s photo., a New York-based architectural firm in consultation with Ireland’s state architect. Both the industrial history of Hell’s Kitchen and the Irish mission of the center – lots of brick and steel and also lots of places to sit and talk – because the center sees hospitality as an Irish virtue.
There are Irish touches throughout the building – most notably, it will feature lines of Irish poetry on the main stair risers, but at the same time, the signs on the building are both Irish and English in a font created in collaboration with Irish typographer Bobby. my god. Most of the furniture is from an Irish craft furniture designer. East, which makes the pieces “injected with Irish character”.
The Center plans to keep its offices in its current building on West 51st Street; At some point, it plans to redo this building and continue to use its 99-seat auditorium for smaller-scale performances. Cyber TireMeanwhile, the one that formerly occupied the 11th Street area still exists – founded in 1916, it claims to be the oldest tire shop in the city and has moved to West 52nd Street just around the corner.
The Irish Center for the Arts began life as a self-made Off Off Broadway theater but has embraced a broader portfolio over the past 15 years; Connolly often says he likes to think of the center’s programming as a mix of 92nd Street Y and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Irish culture is represented in New York in various ways – there are periodic Irish writers on Broadway, for example, and Irish Repertory Theater It presents generally acclaimed productions of Irish drama, but Connolly argues that until now it has not been a flagship center for celebrating and promoting Irish culture in proportion to its influence. French Institute Alliance Française or Scandinavia House.
The organization remains modest in size, at least to the scale of New York City nonprofits, with an estimated $7 million budget for its first year in the new building. But it’s growing steadily – its operating budget was just $690,000 in 2006-07.
In a screening of the expanded work made possible by the new theatre, the center plans to stage its first musical next summer, an adaptation of the 2012 film “Good Vibrations” about the Belfast punk rock scene. The first year is alsoThe same”, a play by Enda Walsh about two women in a psychiatric institution and “Chekhov’s First Play,” over dead center, an Irish/British theater company.
The center will be run for a month by the Irish-French cabaret singer. Camille O’SullivanHe said he would fondly remember the old building where he had performed several times.
“They’re a family and a friend,” O’Sullivan said, “and they give a lot of home to people like me.”
There will also be dance programs. Oona Doherty; Mufutau Yusuf; and Sean Curran With Darrah Carr. And there will be a series of music, poetry, reading and visual art.
There is 31.5 million Americans of Irish descentbut in the center A broad look at Irishand although its donor base is primarily Irish-American, its target audience is diverse.
“They have a really inclusive way of thinking about the culture of the Irish diaspora,” said Georgiana Pickett, an arts consultant who has had several collaborations with the center while she was the executive director of the Baryshnikov Arts Centre. “They did a lot to connect their art history from Ireland to many other parts of the world and this allowed them to include Appalachian music, new immigrant communities in Ireland, people of Irish descent. collaborating with other cultures – this is the Irish Arts Centre, but it has a really diverse definition of what it means.”
The project is primarily funded by government grants in both the United States and Ireland – New York City, which has supported multiple arts institutions over time, has earmarked $37 million for the project.
“This magnificent building is very timely,” said Gonzalo Casals, the city’s cultural affairs commissioner, “because it breaks down the barriers between disciplines and offers an in-depth understanding of Irish culture.”
The Irish government contributed $9 million and the state of New York gave $5 million. Private donors contributed $15 million. The $66 million raised so far—money not spent on the new building—will be used, in part, to support the operating budget.
Irish government money arrived Culture IrelandPromoting Irish culture worldwide as part of an effort announced in 2018 doubling the country’s global footprint. The Irish Center for the Arts has been a major beneficiary of this effort; Culture Ireland director Christine Sisk said her agency has made a “huge investment” in the centre.
“New York is a great city for the arts, and we see it as a gateway to the rest of the United States,” Sisk said. United States of America. “A showcase and guaranteed space to present Irish arts.”
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