LIC Arts nonprofit buys longtime home, new luxury tour site

LONG ISLAND CITY, QUEENS – After a decade of rental in Long Island City, a beloved nonprofit arts organization is establishing itself and opening two permanent locations in the neighborhood.

Flux Factory, an arts collective focused on emerging artists, recently announced that it has purchased the 29th Street space it has been renting since 2009 and plans to open another location in Long Island City next summer at ground floor of Gotham Point, a new waterfront development.

The purchases, both made possible by city funds, offer Flux Factory the promise of a more sustainable future, where it can invest in its artistic programs without constantly worrying about travel; since its inception in 1994, the organization has been established from several locations.

“When I was hired as executive director of Flux Factory seven years ago, we were faced with an impending takeover. We were broke and didn’t really have a plan,” said Nat Roe, executive director of Flux Factory, in a statement, adding that at that time owning a building seemed “impossible”.

Now that the association can imagine a more certain future, it is committed to investing as many resources as possible in its artistic endeavors, Roe said.

“With this sustainability comes a new responsibility: we have to find a way to become bigger shoes by offering better remuneration to artists, an expanded staff and better equipment and facilities,” he said, adding that the new Waterfront location – dubbed Flux IV – will help the nonprofit expand its programming even though its main site remains under temporary construction.

Flux Factory aims to raise $ 50,000 to help cover the cost of hiring a coordinator and setting up a first round of public programs at Flux IV, which will house a gallery and workspace for the artists on the ground floor of Gotham Point, a two-tower luxury real estate complex.

Flux Factory said it was “happy” to be part of a development that includes access to a waterfront park, an elementary school, a library and “tens of thousands of affordable housing units. “. Gotham Point only opens 847 “affordable” apartments at all times, many of which remain available to city residents earning hundreds of thousands of dollars, Patch reported.

However, the space will double the capacity of Flux’s public events. The association organizes around forty events per year, including group exhibitions, where it commissions works by emerging artists, as well as personal exhibitions to its fifty resident artists, who benefit from affordable housing to live and work in through the organization.

“Flux brings together so many different types of people who find themselves in a congruent space at the same time, building this incredibly original community,” said Caroline, a recent resident of Flux Factory. “I’m so warmed up that Flux Factory is evolving in a redesigned and renewed iteration of itself, exploring new and unexplored spaces while remaining rooted in its home on 29th Street.”