Aperture Reveals Programme for New Permanent New York Home

Aperture will open its new permanent home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side on 18 September with an exhibition devoted to New York photography and a programme of talks, publishing and bookselling.

The nonprofit will launch the 10,000 sq ft space at 380 Columbus Avenue with Aperture Loves New York, an installation bringing together photographs and publications by artists including Diane Arbus, Dawoud Bey, Robert Frank, Deana Lawson and Carrie Mae Weems. The exhibition is curated by Aperture executive director Sarah Meister.

Aperture bought the two-floor property, housed in an 1886 building, in 2022, after nearly two decades in a fourth-floor space in Chelsea. Construction began in 2024. By December last year, a $20 million capital campaign had raised more than $16 million.

The move also brings Aperture back to street level. Its former Chelsea gallery and bookstore closed in 2020 as the organisation prepared to relocate, leaving it without a permanent exhibition space. The new building sits opposite the American Museum of Natural History and close to Central Park, with the gallery and bookstore accessible directly from Columbus Avenue. Entry will be free, with the building open five days a week.

Designed by New York architecture practice LEVENBETTS, the new space includes a gallery, bookstore and photo booth alongside Aperture’s offices and production areas.

The bookstore will include a collaboration with Dashwood Books, the specialist New York photography bookseller. For the opening, Anshika Varma, founder of New Delhi’s Offset Projects, will present a selection of independent publishing from India. It will inaugurate a changing series of guest publishers and book displays.

Autumn events will include conversations featuring Stephen Shore, Gillian Laub and Coreen Simpson, while Aperture will publish new monographs by Elle Pérez, Tina Barney and Alex Webb.