NEW YORK.- The Storefront for Art and Architecture and the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) announce the opening of Urban Renewal: The City Without a Ghetto, an exhibition to be held at Storefront for Art and Architecture located at 97 Kenmare Street from September 4 through October 19. There will be an opening reception on Thursday, September 4 from 7– 9pm.
CUP has created the exhibition, Urban Renewal: The City Without a Ghetto, to illustrate the history and present state of urban development in New York City. Using techniques from natural history museums, art installations, and government education campaigns, CUP’s goal is to educate the public about the social processes that create everyday physical environments. The work being showcased will examine selected episodes and themes in the traffic between the social and the physical, centered on Urban Renewal as it was and is practiced in the United States starting in the mid-20th century. New York City and Chicago are the primary case studies.
Individual exhibits will contribute to the viewer’s material understanding of the social construction of the physical environment. The exhibition will include large-scale photography; a video documentary on the history of public housing in New York City; an interactive model displaying government subsidies, do-it-yourself urban research environments and contemporary proposals for economic development in New York.
Urban Renewal: The City Without a Ghetto is one component of a larger series of exhibitions and programs entitled The City Without a Ghetto in 2003. All projects address how areas of human habitat have come to be labeled as unwanted, unneeded, or unimportant, and how various means have been used in attempts to remove, renew, revitalize, or redevelopment these areas through planning.
About CUP - CUP is a nonprofit design and research organization dedicated to the understanding of architecture, urbanism, the physical environment, and social processes. Since 1995, CUP has organized and produced exhibitions, publications, discussions, and educational programs on topics such as Governors Island, building codes, street trees, the African Burial Ground, urban development, and architectural education. Ongoing projects address risk management, business improvement districts, international financial institutions, and municipal waste management.
