Lonti Ebers, administrator of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, will be inaugurating a non-profit arts center in Brooklyn this summer with the aim of fostering artistic growth and elevating less visible interdisciplinary work. The 21,000-square-foot Amant Foundation will occupy four buildings in the borough’s East Williamsburg neighborhood, where it will serve as an arts destination and cultural center. The campus will include two galleries, a performance space and studios for four resident artists, as well as offices, a bookstore and a café.

The foundation took seven years to create and would have cost more than $ 40 million, excluding real estate costs, the mega-collector Ebers having bought its first plot of land in 2014, and the three others, of which it described as housing an old plumbing company where Mafia members met regularly – soon after. Redesigned by the Brooklyn architectural firm SO-IL, the four buildings remain independent, grouped around a large courtyard. Ebers notes that the arrangement “allows for a [interiors] intertwined with paths and gardens.

Led by Ruth Estévez, former principal curator of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, and co-organizer of the upcoming São Paulo Biennale, the foundation will launch its first exhibition on June 5. “Grada Kilomba: Heroines, Birds, and Monsters” will run through October 3 and mark the American debut of Berlin-born Portugal-born Kilomba, known for her work on intergenerational trauma, the transatlantic slave trade and the decolonization.

While the exhibition opens in June, the buildings housing the studios and performance space will open in August. the first resident artists – Gala Porras-Kim, Manthia Diawara, Carla Zaccagnini and Jayne Cortez – are all women. In addition to the studio space, each three-month residency program includes a monthly allowance of $ 3,000; artists are not required to produce works during their stay.

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