ABOUT CANYON
Canyon is a contemporary art space opening in Fall 2026 on the Lower East Side of New York City, dedicated to exhibiting video, sound, and performance. Conceived as a hybrid between a museum, performing arts venue, and a third place, Canyon will offer evening-focused hours, deeply considered hospitality, and state-of-the-art technologies to reimagine how visitors experience these art forms. Founded by philanthropist Robert Rosenkranz and led by former MASS MoCA Director Joe Thompson, Canyon is purpose-built for art that resists the quick glance and invites visitors to stay awhile.
Located at 200 Broome Street, Canyon is an adaptive reuse of vacant commercial space, purposely reconfigured for durational forms of art by New Affiliates Architecture, led by co-founders Ivi Diamantopoulou and Jaffer Kolb. 18,000 square feet of galleries will be equipped to the highest standards of video and audio presentation, while a soaring, 60-foot-tall skylit piazza will serve as a central gathering space, with a café and a full-service bar and restaurant—centrally located to encourage the leisurely flow between socializing and enjoying art. Canyon will also include a performance hall with a 260-person capacity, and will host concerts, lectures, screenings, blackbox performances, podcast tapings, and more. An event calendar, as well as 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—ranging from solo presentations and retrospectives to thematic group shows and experimental hybrids. Our exhibition calendar kicks off with WORLDBUILDING, organized by Serpentine Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist, which explores how artists are exploiting and subverting the aesthetics, technology, and logic of gaming to build alternative realities. Also in development for 2027 is a major, Canyon-wide retrospective of the Japanese artist and composer Ryoji Ikeda, organized by Sam Ozer, Canyon’s Curator-at-Large.
For press inquiries, contact Scott & Co.
For event rental inquiries, contact Hush Venues.
LEADERSHIP
Robert Rosenkranz is the founder of Canyon and a financier, philanthropist, and 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. He is a Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art (and Chair of the Film and Video Committee) and a trustee of the Serpentine Galleries in London (where he has been lead funder for several immersive installations including most recently Refik Anadol’s). He is also a director of the Buck Institute for Aging Research in Novato, California, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and of the Visiting Committees for the Departments of Photography and Asian Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. A graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School, he is the author of The Stoic Capitalist (Bloomsbury) now in stores.
Joe Thompson is the founding Director of Canyon, a new contemporary art space opening in New York City in Fall 2026 dedicated to time-based media. He was 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. Thompson also served as Interim Director and Chief Curator of The Momentary in Bentonville, AR, and Curator-at-Large at Crystal Bridges, expanding programs in visual and performing arts. A graduate of Williams College, with advanced degrees in art history and business from the University of Pennsylvania and Wharton, Thompson has organized major exhibitions and multi-day music festivals, advised state and local agencies, and received numerous honors for his contributions to culture and economic development.
Cass Fino-Radin is Vice President of Art & Technology at Canyon, where they lead the teams that produce exhibitions and technical infrastructure for Canyon. Fino-Radin also directs the Canyon Media Art Conservation Center (CMACC), the first non-profit conservation center in the US devoted to media art. Prior to Canyon, Fino-Radin founded and led Small Data Industries, a private conservation lab specializing in media art. Previously, as a media art conservator at MoMA, they designed the museum's 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, they established the organization's digital preservation program. Fino-Radin has stewarded works by artists including Cory Arcangel, Sondra Perry, Nam June Paik, and Gary Hill, and has advised institutions such as Glenstone, M+, the Walker Art Center, and Haus der elektronischen Künste Basel (HEK).
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. At Canyon, ARC will maintain a drop-off depository for albums donated to the archive and will provide a changing selection of vinyl LPs lent from its extensive holdings—themed and curated by its founder b.George—to be explored and played by visitors in Canyon's listening room. ARC will also contribute from time to time to Canyon’s general exhibition and performance programs.
Sam Ozer is 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. TONO collaborations have presented or commissioned the work of over fifty artists and also included projects with the Serpentine Galleries, London; the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; the Pérez Art Museum Miami; the Venice Biennale; Wiels Brussels; Mudam, Luxembourg; and CAM Gulbenkian, Lisbon, among others. She was the inaugural video curator for Feria Material and 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. Sam Ozer is Curator at Large at Canyon.
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. Productions for screen and stage include William Kentridge’s 9-part episodic series Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot (premiered Venice Biennale 2024, now streaming on MUBI); Kentridge’s work for the stage, including The Great Yes, the Great No (premiered Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, 2024), and the Olivier-award winning SIBYL (premiered Rome Opera, 2019); filmmaker Rithy Panh’s Bangsokol: A Requiem for Cambodia (premiered Melbourne Festival, 2017); and Carrie Mae Weems’ Grace Notes (premiered Spoleto Festival USA, 2016).
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. Their work has been exhibited and published internationally. Most recently, they received a Design Excellence Award from New York’s Public Design Commission and were featured in the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition New York, New Publics. They have been named "Next Progressives" by Architect Magazine, featured in ‘best of’ lists in Wallpaper, Cultured, and the Architect’s Newspaper, and recognized with a Bessie Award for Outstanding Visual Design, the Architectural League Prize and the New Practices Award by the American Institute of Architects.
Image Credits: 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.