{"id":905053,"date":"2026-11-04T01:36:16","date_gmt":"2026-11-04T01:36:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/905053\/"},"modified":"2026-11-04T01:36:16","modified_gmt":"2026-11-04T01:36:16","slug":"new-york-studio-school-revamp-unearths-long-forgotten-murals-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/905053\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Studio School revamp unearths long-forgotten murals – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in 1907, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney established her sculpture studio in a converted stable and hayloft on MacDougal Alley in the heart of Manhattan\u2019s Greenwich Village. The heiress and artist then proceeded to procure four neighbouring brownstones one by one, with the Lincoln Memorial sculptor Daniel Chester French being the last holdout.<\/p>\n

The five buildings that now comprise 8 West 8th Street are some of the New York art world\u2019s most storied. It was here that Whitney promoted US artists at a time when they were widely denigrated, and where she opened the Whitney Museum of American Art<\/a> in 1931. After the museum relocated uptown, the nascent New York Studio School<\/a> (NYSS) moved into the compound in 1967.<\/p>\n

Over the past century Edward Hopper<\/a> sketched, John Cage<\/a> lectured and Philip Guston<\/a> taught within these walls. Countless other greats practised, exhibited or, in the case of Marianne Faithfull, lived in what is now a National Historic Landmark. \u201cThis building has been the incubator for American art for 120 years,\u201d says the artist Matthew Ritchie, sitting in a bare-bones conference room on a warm September afternoon. It has also been sorely in need of a makeover at least since he was a student here in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

Leaks and hazards<\/p>\n

When Ritchie was named the school\u2019s director last year, the roof and studio skylights\u2014coveted by students for their diffused natural light\u2014leaked, the nearly century-old cloth-wrapped wiring had deteriorated dangerously and wheelchair access was extremely limited. His priority was renovation. The first phase\u2014including doubling the public exhibition space and creating a new accessible lecture and performance hall in wood with stepped seating\u2014is set to be completed this autumn, and phase two will begin in the spring.<\/p>\n

Prior to Ritchie\u2019s arrival, the school had obtained public grants for the necessary work, but they required matching funds and their expiration date was fast approaching. He quickly marshalled forces. The board agreed to donate the required money, he says, and the school tapped Matthew Baird of Baird Architects to helm the overhaul.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The renovation work uncovered an early work by the British-born artist Cecily Brown painted on the wall when she was a student there in the 1990s<\/p>\n

Courtesy New York Studio School<\/p>\n

Ritchie and Baird\u2019s history of collaboration dates back 17 years and across two other local institutions. In 2009, they teamed up to consider the effects of rising sea levels on the built environment as part of the interdisciplinary Rising Currents project<\/a> at the Museum of Modern Art<\/a>. Just a few years later, they put their theories into practice after Hurricane Sandy tore through the city, its storm surge flooding much of downtown. Ritchie was on the board of the beloved alternative art space The Kitchen<\/a> when it enlisted Baird to rehabilitate its waterlogged lobby and black-box theatre.<\/p>\n

The architect\u2019s sensitive execution on that project\u2014he preserved visual evidence of flood damage, for example\u2014made him an obvious choice for the NYSS project, which presented a similar challenge. \u201cYou have this really cool building that\u2019s got this patina of great artists that have moved through it,\u201d Baird says. \u201cHow do you not erase that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Buried treasure<\/p>\n

Thanks to Baird and Ritchie\u2019s handle-with-care edict, the construction crew was on the lookout for treasures buried beneath layers of plasterboard. The artist Cecily Brown<\/a> had told Ritchie that she painted her first mural on a school wall when she was a student in the 1990s but could not remember where. And the school archives held numerous photos of murals Whitney had commissioned from the artist Robert E. Locher for the original carriage house.<\/p>\n

Sure enough, the crew uncovered the work of both artists within a 24-hour period. Brown\u2019s piece\u2014featuring disembodied penises, two of them appearing to kiss\u2014is in the newly expanded gallery space on the main floor. To prevent it from potentially distracting from exhibitions, the design team installed a shallow cabinet in front of the mural.<\/p>\n

Ritchie jokes that the set-up resembles a gabinetto segreto, or secret room, the most famous of which was a locked vault of erotic artefacts from Pompeii and Herculaneum. \u201cWho doesn\u2019t want a Cecily Brown mural? And then, who doesn\u2019t want pornography in your brand-new public gallery?\u201d he says with a laugh. \u201cIt\u2019s the perfect combination.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A recently uncovered mural by the artist Robert E. Locher, commissioned by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney<\/p>\n

Courtesy New York Studio School<\/p>\n

Workers discovered the two Locher murals where a bathroom and a hallway leading to it will be built. Intended to be viewed in the candlelight of Whitney\u2019s dining room, one is a glimmering green, the other a trompe l\u2019oeil image of doric columns. Baird tweaked the layout but not the location of the restroom. \u201cNow it will be the most historic bathroom in New York,\u201d Ritchie says.<\/p>\n

A less fortuitous surprise: the beams beneath Robert Winthrop Chanler\u2019s flame-motif fireplace in Whitney\u2019s original second-floor studio were cracking, requiring emergency shoring up to stop the ceiling from collapse\u2014together with the priceless fireplace. \u201cThis is the urgency of renovation,\u201d Ritchie says. \u201cYou can wait too long, and then you lose it all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Super-tight deadlines<\/p>\n

Because of the grant deadlines for the first phase of the project, Baird needed to work at warp speed, condensing three years of planning, permitting, bidding and execution into one. Owing to New York City\u2019s complex building code, he approached the $2.2m renovation as \u201c100 small projects\u201d rather than gutting the 59,000 sq. ft building. The landmark-restoration specialist Jonathan Raible is overseeing the new roof.<\/p>\n

In addition to enhancing the first floor\u2019s public spaces, Baird rewired the building, renovated the wreck of a kitchen and improved accessibility by adding a wheelchair lift to the performance hall. \u201cYou can\u2019t have a public programme if you don\u2019t provide correct facilities for the public,\u201d Ritchie says. \u201cYou\u2019re not really welcoming them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Climbing the narrow staircases to the maze of studios where the school\u2019s 27 full-time, in-person students work, Baird speaks enthusiastically about the second phase of renovations, which will include a student coffee bar. In keeping with his preservationist instincts, he plans to relamp with LED bulbs the elegant Fresnel recessed box lighting that Whitney installed for evenly washed walls, and he hopes to restore the system of baffles that modulated direct light in the studios as well as undertake other restoration while safeguarding the landmark\u2019s character.<\/p>\n

Ritchie already has his eye on another, likely longer-term fix for the school: free tuition. \u201cThat would require a very large endowment from extremely generous single or multiple donors,\u201d he says, giving his best impression of a silver-tongued salesman, \u201cwhich we\u2019re eagerly awaiting with an entirely unique naming opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back in 1907, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney established her sculpture studio in a converted stable and hayloft on MacDougal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":905054,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,378698,191588,229,88,6359,1999,378697,27829,46768],"class_list":["post-905053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-cecily-brown","tag-conservation-preservation","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-museums-heritage","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-studio-school","tag-renovation","tag-whitney-museum-of-american-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=905053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/905054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=905053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=905053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=905053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}