Ford Foundation Gallery at the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice
320 East 43rd Street
New York, NY 10017
(212) 573-5000
Open: Sunday Closed/Monday-Saturday 11:00am-6:00pm
Fee: Free to the public
My review on TripAdvisor:
The Ford Foundation at 320 East 43rd Street
The Ford Foundation Building
The Ford Foundation Building at 320 East 43rd Street in the Turtle Bay neighborhood. Take time after visiting the gallery to tour the gardens in the lobby.
When I was touring the Turtle Bay neighborhood for my blog, “MywalkinManhattan.com”, I toured the Ford Foundation Building on East 43rd Street and wondered through the lobby area gardens I came across the Ford Foundation Gallery, which is just off the main lobby. The small gallery delves into some deep material on social commentaries about life and the artists featured have some pretty interesting perspectives on their work.
The Ford Gallery gardens inside the building
The pool of the Ford Foundation Garden
The beauty of the Ford Foundation gardens
The Ford Foundation Gallery entrance
The first exhibition I saw there was “Radical Love”, a theme is dealing with ‘love as the answer to a world in peril’. This interesting exhibition offers multidisciplinary art dealing with human nature and society. How different cultures show their respect and love to one another. It is an interesting mix of paintings, photos and video art from all over the world with each other showing their interpretation of dealing with the issues in life. You really have to read between the lines with this exhibition.
The ‘Radical Love’ exhibition at the new Ford Foundation Gallery
(from the museum website on the exhibition)
Through the theme of Utopian Imagination, the trilogy of exhibitions in the gallery’s inaugural year create a trajectory toward a more just future. The first exhibition, Perilous Bodies (March 4 – May 11, 2019), examined injustice through the intersecting lens of violence, race, gender, ethnicity, and class. Radical Love responds to the first show by offering love as the answer to a world in peril.
Love, in the context of this exhibition, is defined by a commitment to the spiritual growth and interconnectedness of the individual, their community, and stewardship of the planet. Guided by the powerful words of bell hooks, “Were we all seeing more images of loving human interaction, it would undoubtedly have a positive impact on our lives.” The works in Radical Love are grounded in ideas of devotion, abundance, and beauty; here, otherness and marginality is celebrated, adorned, and revered. The Utopian Imagination exhibition trilogy concept was developed by Jaishri Abichandani.
In 2024, I saw the new show “Cantando Bajito Incantations“:
The sign from the exhibition:
(from the website)
The Gallery
Work from the exhibition
Translated into English as “singing softly,” the exhibition series title is drawn from a phrase used by Dora María Téllez Argüello, a now-liberated Nicaraguan political prisoner, to describe the singing exercises she did while she was incarcerated in isolation. Helping her to conserve her voice and defeat the political terror she endured, Téllez’s quiet singing became a powerful strategy for survival and resistance. Conceived in three movements, Cantando Bajito features artists who explore similar forms of creative resistance in the wake of widespread gender-based violence. The second chapter, Cantando Bajito: Incantations, brings together artists who consider ancestral, contemporary, and future-facing networks of support and care that safeguard feminized bodies through forms of knowledge transmission.
Work from the exhibition
Such networks—symbolic systems, subversive spaces, or covert forms of language—are as varied as the communities that develop them. They include Nüshu, a form of script passed from mother to daughter in China; the use of henna as an agent of protection; and forms of therapeutic communication that have been deemed “gossip.” All have long existed, whether in the shadows or in plain sight. Preserved not in written history but in the body, these channels prepare feminized bodies for potential violence while giving them tools to resist it.
Works from the show
Works from the show
From inside the tent
The History of the Ford Foundation Gallery and it’s recent opening:
(From the museum website)
This new 1,900 square foot gallery space opened in February of 2019 after a two-year renovation of the Ford Foundation Building. The Ford Foundation Gallery will be an innovative exhibition space dedicated to presenting multidisciplinary art, performance and public programming by artists committed to exploring issues of justice and injustice. In creating a space for artists whose work addresses pressing social issues, the foundation continues its decades long history of investing in the arts to advance human welfare (Ford Foundation Press Release).
Athi-Patra Ruga’s ‘Umesiyakazi in Waiting’
With a mission focused on addressing inequality in all its forms and providing more than $600 million annually in grant support to organizations on four continents, the Ford Foundation is a natural home for art that challenges viewers to grapple with fundamental questions of fairness and dignity. Three exhibitions in this inaugural year offer varied interpretations on the theme of Utopian Imagination (Ford Foundation Press Release).
The gallery is small and you can see these exhibitions in under an hour.
Visiting a Museum: The Unique, Unusual, Obscure and Historical 