Best of Brooklyn: Art & Performance

By Brooklyn Magazine

From the best new neighborhood for artists to the best street photographer, here’s our picks for what’s interesting in Brooklyn’s art and performance world.

Best Neighborhood for Outrageously High Rental Rates for Studio Spaces That Sorta Suck: Bushwick
$3.50 to $5 per square foot for STUDIO spaces, and often not even a decent space with, say, windows. Arbitrarily arrived at prices established and exacerbated by some of the very people who claim to “support” local artists. Red alert on the bullshit radar. By the way, word to local real estate investors: Look forward to your 20 million dollar property getting super famous as a Superfund site!

Best Reason to Barely Leave Brooklyn for Performances & Installations: Knockdown Center
This mixed-use, mixed-space venue far enough up Flushing Avenue to just barely place you in Maspeth, Queens, exploits the hell out of its massive maw of post-industrial rawness to host some of the edgiest exhibits and events around. Things like this can’t last forever, so try hard to never miss anything there. Sooner or later, the fucking wedding receptions will take over.
52-19 Flushing Avenue, Queens

Photo by Mike Benigno, courtesy of BAM

Best Use of a Dancer at BAM since Pina Bausch’s Vollmond: Hannibal Buress and his Solo Ballerina
At the end of Buress’s comedy set at BAM last February, he had a woman dance en pointe around him on the stage. It was strange, but it was also compelling and quite lovely; now, we are firmly of the opinion that all stand-up could use a little more ballet.

Best Reminder That Technology is Kind of Fucking Us (Literally): Faith Holland’s Technophilia exhibit
Artist Faith Holland reminds us that, no matter how much we advance technologically, the Internet will still mostly be about porn. This was confirmed at her exhibit when GIFs of waterfalls and overflowing champagne bottles literally turned us on.

Best Brooklyn Street Photographer: Andre Wagner

Best Platform for Rush Hour Busking: Tie between Church Avenue bound G train at Metropolitan, and Stillwell Avenue bound F train at Jay Street-Metrotech
What can we say? We never feel like pulling out our wallet more than when we get serenaded at these platforms.

Best Reminder that All the World’s a Stage: The Annual Performance by the Philharmonic in Prospect Park

Best Place for Artists Not in North Brooklyn: Sunset Park
If you don’t mind a commute along the N/R/D line, then Sunset Park starts to make a whole lot more sense for artists on the lookout for affordable studio space. There’s an abundance of converted factories in the neighborhood, and there’s also a lot of grant-subsidized studio space available via places like the chashama foundation in the massive, revamped Brooklyn Army Terminal. Plus, there’s so much good cheap Mexican and Chinese food nearby, so being a “starving” artist is actually pretty hard.

Best New Cluster of Galleries: Tiger Strikes Asteroid Gallery, Microscope Gallery, and the Transmitter building
All along Willoughby Avenue, Bushwick

Best New Occasional Exhibition Space: The Buggy House
14 Kossuth Place, Bushwick