featured-image

So how’d we do? Well...

let me be as straight as I can be. This was not a banner year for the arts in Jersey City. After a long ascent, we slipped into a holding pattern in 2024.



There remain many good reasons to be optimistic about the future of the arts here and to express our excitement about where we’re headed, but the prevailing tone of ’24 was transitory. Transit means uncertainty — especially about great things we’ve been promised that may or may not materialize — and many our arts events and arts discussions arrived with a noticeable undercurrent of restlessness. Shouldn’t we be there by now? Maybe.

Or maybe 2023 is best understood in retrospect as a false arrival , and we’ve still got many miles to go before we’ve built a scene sturdy enough to support the talent of its participants. Last year we went large and kinetic: we balled up the Studio Tour, the 14C Art Fair, and several other events into a single fissile amalgamation, loaded up the catapult, and flung it at ourselves. The result was invigorating, but also painful, as the larger events drew attention and visitors away from the smaller ones.

Jersey City Art Week was hyped by the municipal government as our answer to Art Basel . If it was, that answer was tentatively given and swiftly marked incorrect. Many artists concluded that Jersey City simply wasn’t big or mature enough to accommodate a high-profile citywide event.

I don’t agree with this, but I do acknowledge that the Art Basel mode.

Back to Fashion Page