The Kitchen will present a weekend of programming for The West Side Cultural Network’s second annual West Side Fest, which brings together museums, parks, performing arts centers, and cultural institutions to celebrate the cultural village along the western Manhattan waterfront. The festival, joining cultural hubs within a half-mile portion of historic Manhattan, offers free admission, special indoor and outdoor programming, crafts for kids and families, artmaking activities for all ages, and performances.
On Friday, July 12 (6-8pm), The Kitchen and Westbeth co-host a kick-off party for the festival, celebrating the shared histories of the two institutions whose current intersection is predated by five decades of overlapping history central to New York’s avant-garde, and has resulted in The Kitchen finding, in Westbeth, a kindred organization to call its temporary home. The event takes place at The Kitchen’s loft within Westbeth (163B Bank Street, 4th Floor Loft), where it will feature music, drinks, and a poster sale offering attendees the opportunity to take home vital emblems of The Kitchen’s storied and influential past.
On Saturday, July 13, from 11:30am to 1pm, The Kitchen hosts a free and open to the public Tai Chi Workshop, led by Kitchen artist Chuck Martin and Westbeth resident Mitch Moses. From 1-6 pm that day, The Kitchen’s poster sale continues at a table at Westbeth's Art & Craft & Vintage Market in the Westbeth Courtyard. (Westbeth’s market also takes place Sunday, July 14.)
Westbeth’s programming will include the Penny Jones & CO Puppets’ Peppi and the Pop-Up Dragon—a puppet show for children of all ages inside a giant Pop-Up book (Saturday, July 13 at 11am); self-guided open studio tours offering attendees glimpses into iconic artists’ live/work spaces (Saturday, July 13 and Sunday, July 14, 1-5pm); and a theater piece from You’re Never Too Old to Play (Saturday, July 13 at 7pm), an improvisational, story-telling acting-workshop for seniors at Westbeth Center for the Arts.
Amid transformative renovations to The Kitchen’s Chelsea home in a moment of momentous growth, the Kitchen’s participation in West Side Fest demonstrates its recommitment to its community, and its aims to expand its already-multigenerational audience. It also underscores the organization’s interconnectedness with various boundary-breaking arts institutions and movements that have emerged in lower Manhattan since its founding over 50 years ago. Since its temporary move to Westbeth Artists Housing, the organization has doubled down on its commitment to porousness, flexibility, and collaboration—taking a “without walls” approach to its institutional identity and programming and emphasizing its existence in dialogue with others that exemplify and uphold the framework of experimental creative practice and pedagogy.
The Kitchen is part of the West Side Cultural Network, which also includes the Center for Art, Research and Alliances, Chelsea Factory, Dia Chelsea, the High Line, Hill Art Foundation, Hudson River Park, The Joyce Theater, Little Island, The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center, New York City AIDS Memorial, Poster House, Print Center New York, Rubin Museum of Art, The Shed, Westbeth Artists Housing, West Village Rehearsal Co-Op, White Columns, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
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