ABOUT CANYON
Opening 2026 in NYC’s Lower East Side, CANYON is a new 40,000-square-foot cultural venue devoted to video, music, performance, and other forms of art that invite viewers – and listeners – to spend a little time.
Conceived as a hybrid between museum, performing arts venue, and the downtown social scene, CANYON will offer evening-focused hours, deeply considered hospitality, and state-of-the-art technologies to reimagine how audiences experience these forms of art.
Founded by philanthropist Robert Rosenkranz and helmed by Joe Thompson, Canyon is an adaptive re-use of vacant commercial space, purposely re-configured for durational forms of art by architects New Affiliates Architecture—led by co-founders Ivi Diamantopoulou and Jaffer Kolb.
CANYON will feature 18,000 square feet of galleries equipped to the highest standards of video and audio presentation, along with a soaring, 60-foot-tall skylit piazza that serves as a central gathering space, with bars, a café, and full-service restaurant.
Designed to encourage leisurely flow between socializing, and enjoying art, the centrally located bar and café will function as a communal hub—an everyday gathering place with the openness of a town square, where visitors can linger, reconnect, and return throughout the evening. The venue will also include a performance hall accommodating up to 260 people, serving as a home for concerts, lectures, screenings, blackbox performances, and podcast tapings. A food and beverage partner will be announced in the coming months.
CANYON will present three major exhibition cycles per year—spring, summer, and fall—featuring solo presentations, retrospectives, thematic group shows, and experimental hybrids.
Several shows are in development, including a major, CANYON-wide retrospective of the Japanese artist/composer Ryoji Ikeda, organized by Sam Ozer, CANYON curator-at-large, and Worldbuilding, organized by Serpentine Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist, which explores how 35 international artists are exploiting and subverting the aesthetics, technology and logic of gaming to build alternative realities.
For press inquiries, contact scott & CO.
Opening in NYC 2026
Opening in NYC 2026
LEADERSHIP
Robert Rosenkranz is a financier, a philanthropist, and a longstanding art collector, with prominent collections of Asian art, modern design, and time-based media. He is the Founder and Chairman of Open to Debate (formerly Intelligence Squared U.S.), a public policy debate series that provides a forum for reasoned public discourse through live events, a popular podcast, and a weekly prime-time NPR program. This initiative is primarily funded by The Rosenkranz Foundation, which he established, and which also supports public policy studies, innovations in the arts, and scientific research.
Joseph Thompson is the founding director of MASS MoCA, where he led the museum from concept to reality over more than three decades, transforming it into one of the world’s largest and most adventurous centers for new art in all media. Under his leadership, the museum expanded to 550,000 square feet, wove music and performance art across the entire institution, and launched iconic long-term installations by Sol LeWitt, Anselm Kiefer, Laurie Anderson, Jenny Holzer, James Turrell, and Louise Bourgeois, catalyzing transformational regional economic revitalization.
Cass Fino-Radin is the founder of Small Data Industries, a conservation lab and consultancy specializing in time-based media art. Previously, at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), they designed the museum's first digital preservation infrastructure and led conservation projects ranging from video games to the restoration of Teiji Furuhashi's landmark installation, Lovers. As Rhizome's first Digital Conservator, Fino-Radin established the organization's digital preservation program.
PARTNERS AND CURATORIAL AFFILIATES
Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) was founded as a non-profit in 1971 by Howard Wise, a major patron of the art and technology movement of the 1960s and is one of the first organizations in the world dedicated to video art. For over 50 years, EAI has stewarded a singular, intergenerational collection of media art by artists including Nam June Paik, Barbara Hammer, Maggie Lee, Sondra Perry, and Charles Atlas, among many others. Through distribution, preservation, free public programming, and artist commissions, EAI promotes and provides access to this collection for educational and cultural use among global audiences.
Rhizome is the international hub for new media art. Founded in 1996 by artist Mark Tribe, the 501(c)3 organization presents programs in partnership with museums around the world and on the internet, focusing on preserving the history of digital art and commissioning specialized new works by artists working with new technologies. The organization has a strong presence online and in New York City, as a partner of the New Museum since 2003, with ongoing support from the Mellon Foundation, NEA, Teiger Foundation, and more.
The ARChive of Contemporary Music (ARC) is a not-for-profit archive, music library and research center located in upstate New York, ARC collects, preserves and provides information on the popular music of all cultures throughout the world. Since 1985 ARC's holdings have grown to more than 3 million sound recordings, making the ARChive the largest popular music collection in the world.
THE OFFICE performing arts + film is an independent, multidisciplinary curatorial and production company based in New York. Founded by Rachel Chanoff, THE OFFICE works in sustained partnership with artists, institutions, festivals, and venues around the world to create cultural programming that is unique and mission specific. THE OFFICE serves as the Curator of Performing Arts & Film at MASS MoCA, Consultant to the Feature Film Program for the Sundance Institute, Programmer and Executive Producer of the FreshGrass Festival, and Curator of the Margaret Mead Film Festival and New York Jewish Film Festival, among many other projects.
Sam Ozer is curator at large at canyon. she is also a writer and the founder of TONO, a non-profit arts organization dedicated to time-based artwork, with an annual festival across museums and music venues in Mexico City and Puebla, Mexico. She was the inaugural video curator for Feria Materialand Zonamaco fair (both in Mexico City). She previously held curatorial and programming roles at the Poetic Justice Group at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and at the Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 in New York.
New Affiliates Architecture is an award-winning New York-based studio led by Ivi Diamantopoulou and Jaffer Kolb. The firm has completed a wide range of work—from ground-up residences to interiors, exhibitions, and installations—for institutions including the Jewish Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Park Avenue Armory, among others. Alongside commissioned work, they initiate projects and collaborations that address reuse within a context of material excess, particularly as it relates to current standards of practice. For this work, they have collaborated with various branches of the New York City government, including the Departments of Sanitation and Parks and Recreation.
Image Credits: Exterior Rendering of CANYON by New Affiliates. Featuring installation views of works (clockwise) by Ian Cheng, Rebecca Allen, Theo Triantafyllidis and LuYang. Courtesy of the artists and CANYON, ©New Affiliates. | Interior Rendering of CANYON by New Affiliates. Featuring installation views of works (left to right) by Theo Triantafyllidis, JODI (Joan Heemskerk & Dirk Paesmans), and Jakob Kudsk Steensen. Courtesy of the artists and CANYON, © New Affiliates. | Canyon staff photo by by Daniel Terna