AIR, Art International Radio is an online, non-profit cultural Internet radio station at ARTonAIR.org that is also home to the Clocktower Gallery. Operating from the 13th floor of McKim, Mead, and White's historic Clock Tower Office Building in New York City, AIR is directed by Alanna Heiss, the founder and former Director of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, Queens.[1]
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AIR, Art International Radio was launched on January 1, 2009 after negotiations with the former resident, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (which operated its own Internet radio station WPS1.org), and a transfer of the space, equipment, staff, and content was achieved. The non-profit AIR is licensed by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in the legendary Clocktower Gallery spaces, which AIR Director Alanna Heiss has occupied since 1972.
AIR’s radio programming is anchored in thousands of hours of cultural content available free on-demand online at www.ARTonAIR.org. This archive is recognized worldwide as a unique cultural resource, educational tool, and historic repository. In addition to regular new talk programs hosted by curators, critics, writers, musicians, and art world aficionados, the archive contains the entire production output of the former WPS1.org, discontinued last year. Programs include new music, spoken word, theatre and discussions on a variety of topics recorded both in-studio and offsite from art events worldwide such as Art Basel Miami Beach and the Venice Biennale. AIR is also committed to organizational collaborations by recording, editing and archiving public programs from diverse cultural groups, galleries, museums, and performing art centers.
In parallel with the radio project, the gallery spaces are used for artists’ projects, workshops, community events, and residencies. In June 2009, installations and artworks commissioned by AIR went on view in the galleries and project spaces. Works by Tony Oursler, Todd Eberle, Mary Heilmann and Sabina Streeter reinaugurated the Clocktower Galler's exhibition program.[2] [3] In June 2010, the second exhibition at AIR's Clocktower Gallery opened; entitled The Dangerous Book Four Boys, it was the first solo exhibition of the work of actor and artist James Franco.[4][5]
In the 1970s, Alanna Heiss emerged as one of the most prominent figures of the alternative space movement. In 1971, she founded The Institute for Art and Urban Resources, which was devoted to creating installations in otherwise unused or overlooked spaces in New York. The Institute's first pioneering exhibition, Under the Brooklyn Bridge, featured such artists as Carl Andre, Philip Glass, and Sol LeWitt, and was organized by Heiss with the help of the post-Minimalist sculptor Gordon Matta Clark.[6] In 1972, under the aegis of this organization, she created the Clocktower Gallery, located on the 13th Floor of a 19th Century city-owned McKim, Mead & White building, on Leonard Street and Broadway in lower Manhattan, New York.
Opening with three inaugural one-person shows by Joel Shapiro, Richard Tuttle, and James Bishop (artist), the Clocktower Gallery became a legendary alternative space for performance, installation, and interdisciplinary work. It presented seminal works in all media by such artists as Neil Williams (artist), Gordon Matta-Clark, Max Neuhaus, Lynda Benglis, Dennis Oppenheim, Colette Justine, Vito Acconci, Nam June Paik, Robert Smithson, Charlotte Moorman, Laurie Anderson, David Tudor, and Min Tanaka, among many others.
After September 11, 2001, security procedures in this City-owned building suspended ongoing activity and exhibitions in the Clocktower. In 2004, the space became the headquarters of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center’s Web radio station, Art Radio WPS1.org.
Since WPS1.org’s discontinuation in December 2008, the Clocktower Gallery space has become home to the offices, recording studios, and gallery spaces of AIR, Art International Radio. The Clocktower Gallery has been host to two exhibitions since its 2009 reinauguration as an exhibition space (see above).
AIR is directed by founder and former director of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center Alanna Heiss and a staff that includes several former P.S.1 employees who were directly involved in the museum’s public programs, exhibitions, and radio station. Managing Director David Weinstein was Director of Public Programs at P.S.1 and led the curatorial team that assembled the summer Warm Up music series there; Jeannie Hopper is a longtime radio personality and DJ at WBAI-FM who takes on the role of Station Manager; and Beatrice Johnson brings curatorial expertise from P.S.1 as AIR’s Program Manager.
Built 1894-1898, the Clock Tower Office Building was originally the home office of the New York Life Insurance Company, until the company’s relocation to Madison Square in 1927. The Clock Tower continued to be used as an office building, housing some City agencies as early as 1939. The City of New York bought the building in 1967 and moved the Criminal Court, Summons Part there, along with several City agencies.
McKim, Mead & White's Broadway frontage is a flamboyant palazzo-like pavilion crowned by a clock tower. The building retains many of New York Life's original interior spaces, including a marble lobby, a 13-story stair hall, a banking hall, executive offices, and the clock tower machinery room.
The Clock Tower Building is a designated New York City Landmark, with both the exterior and parts of the interior landmarked. It is also on the New York State and National Registers of Historic Places.[7]