Art for Change: The Artist & Homeless Collaborative examines the history of modern homelessness in New York City through the lens of the Artist & Homeless Collaborative, a public art project founded in 1990 by multidisciplinary artist Hope Sandrow. The program, which connected women from the Park Avenue Armory Shelter for Homeless Women with artists, curators, and activists, provided a vehicle for the women to tell their stories, work creatively, and build relationships. On view in the Joyce B. Cowin Women’s History Gallery, the exhibition looks at the transformative potential of art in public and private life through a selection of art projects led by John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres, Ida Applebroog, the Guerrilla Girls, Hope Sandrow, Judith Shea, Kiki Smith, among others. 

Art for Change includes John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres’s Ernestine and Three Friends (1992)—a group of painted plaster life-cast busts of four shelter residents held in New-York Historical’s collections. Examples of work created by participants and artists on view include self-portraits, photography, mixed media, pin-back buttons, writings, and other artistic expressions. The exhibition also features the work of advocates and artists that were a direct response to the homeless crisis in New York of the late 1970s and 1980s as well as more recent works from artists and art groups that continue to bring art into shelters, using it as an opportunity to build relationships and as a way for people to tell their stories.

Installation details (pictured right): Included in the section “Art as Activism” are three portraits of friends who passed from our lives due to AIDS. Loss that propelled me to question the relevancy of art to life personally...

(l to r) Portrait of Nicolas Moufarrege  and Portrait of Keith Haring, Men on the Streets, 1982, Silver gelatin prints 14" x 11”; Hope Sandrow with Peter Hujar, Self Control, Back on the Streets, 1984 Silver gelatin print framed 24" x 20”.

Edna Diaz, Hope Sandrow Three Views: The Life of Edna Diaz, 1991 Newsprint 15 ⅜ x 10 ¼ in, Silver print 13 ⅜" x 9 ⅜", Color Polaroids 28.75" x 23.5", staples

8 Anonymous Residents 25th Regiment Armory with Hope Sandrow and Michael Boodro, What I need/What I want, Color Polaroids, staples, each unique 10” x 10” 1994