Abramovic foundation for Hudson

Art in America, Feb, 2008 by David Ebony

A new venue for performance art is set to open in the town of Hudson in upstate New York. The space will also serve as the home of the Marina Abramovic Foundation. The renowned performance artist recently closed the deal on a nearly $1-million, 16,500-square-foot property in the town center. The structure, a disused Art Deco movie theater built in 1925, had been converted over the years into indoor tennis courts and, subsequently, a storage facility for antique architectural details and fixtures. Restoration of the site is slated to begin this spring, and public programs are planned to start soon after Abramovic completes preparations for her 2010 Museum of Modern Art retrospective.

A Belgrade native, Abramovic, now 61, left Yugoslavia in 1976 and settled in Amsterdam. She shifted her base to New York City five years ago and recently sold her Amsterdam home to help finance the Hudson acquisition. She told A.i.A. that her initial plan was to establish her foundation in Brooklyn. While still working out the details of the foundation's structure and endowment, she tried to purchase an abandoned factory in Williamsburg. But when the deal fell through due to environmental issues, she began to look farther afield. The Hudson space is to accommodate a nonprofit performance and education facility, including a research center accessible to the public. In addition, spaces will be provided to house Abramovic's performance-art library, containing an extensive collection of experimental video and film, which she is bringing from her former residence in Amsterdam. The collection contains not only her own works but those by many other pioneers of the international postwar avant-garde.

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