Set on two floors of a historic building, Aperture’s permanent home will become a hub for public engagement, with flexible spaces for programming, a bookstore, and reimagined office and production areas.

Image courtesy LEVENBETTS

Aperture will soon have a new permanent home, stationed within two floors of a historic building in the heart of New York’s Upper West Side. Located at 380 Columbus Avenue and 78th Street, the new space situates Aperture at the nexus of a vibrant residential neighborhood and bustling tourist destination—across from the American Museum of Natural History and blocks from the New-York Historical Society and Central Park—providing access to a wider-than-ever spectrum of local and international audiences. Award-winning architecture practice LEVENBETTS is designing flexible spaces for public events, small-scale exhibitions and art installations, the Aperture bookstore, and reimagined office and production spaces for Aperture’s robust publishing program, all while retaining the building’s historic character. The new space is set to open in 2025.

Featuring a ground floor entrance and expansive street presence, the building enables Aperture to expand its reach and strengthen the impact of its initiatives. Two floors, encompassing ten thousand square feet of the 1886 building, will be repurposed as a hub for collaboration and convening, and as a site for public programming and engagement with Aperture’s magazine, books, and prints. The highly visible and welcoming space signals a renewed, long-term vision for Aperture’s future—one that recognizes Aperture’s critical role in bringing together the array of artists, writers, institutions, and enthusiasts that are transformed by photography every day.

Having recently celebrated its seventieth anniversary in 2022, Aperture has been located for nearly two decades at a fourth-floor space in Chelsea, where the organization has mounted exhibitions and public programs, published Aperture magazine and countless acclaimed photobooks, and hosted its bookstore and limited-edition print program. The acquisition and design of the new home is funded in part through an active capital campaign. The acquisition was spearheaded by Cathy Kaplan, chair of Aperture’s board of trustees, Helen Nitkin, chair of the board’s real estate committee, and Sarah Meister, executive director of Aperture.

In its new home, Aperture will offer focused presentations that build community. Extending its reach beyond its New York space, Aperture will also continue collaborations with major institutional partners to mount large-scale exhibitions and programming. Recent partnerships include the Aperture-organized exhibitions As We Rise: Photography from the Black Atlantic curated by Elliott Ramsey, on view in 2023 at the Polygon Gallery in Vancouver and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts; The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion, curated by Antwaun Sargent and on view in spring 2023 at the Sarasota Art Museum; and Native America: In Translation curated by artist Wendy Red Star and expanding on her role as guest editor for the “Native America” issue of Aperture magazine, which travels in 2023 through 2025 to venues, including the Milwaukee Art Museum, University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, and Blanton Museum of Art in Austin.

Learn about the many ways to support Aperture at this historic moment by visiting aperture.org/support 

Read more about Aperture’s new permanent home in the New York Times, the Art Newspaper,  I Love The Upper West Side, and the West Side Rag.