Pioneer Works

Pioneer Works is a nonprofit cultural arts center in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City was imagined as a social sculpture by its founder, the artist Dustin Yellin in 2012. and as a place where artists, scientists, and thinkers from various backgrounds could converge and work together in real time; this “museum of process” was inspired by utopian visionaries such as Buckminster Fuller and radical institutions such as Black Mountain College. The ethos of Pioneer Works is that learning is intrinsic to creating culture, and should be a shared and interactive pursuit through which to model new ways of living and existing together.

Gabriel Florenz, PW's Founding Artistic and Executive Director, played a central role in establishing the nonprofit and shaping its artistic and programmatic vision. Working alongside a group of artists, supporters, and advisors, he led the renovation of the historic structure and helped launch Pioneer Works as a thriving public institution that opened its doors to the public in 2012. In 2014, Janna Levin, a Columbia University astrophysicist and author, joined as the organization's Founding Director of Sciences. Her arrival completed the realization of our mission as a place where the arts and sciences meet as equal and intertwined pursuits.

Pioneer Works includes a large exhibition space, a garden, an artist-in-residency program, a class and lecture series, and a press, and "aim[s] to foster innovation in the performing and visual arts, music and science."