Breezing through the 35,000-square-foot home of Materials for the Arts is about as close as you might get to touring Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Earlier this year, the vast warehouse in Queens was chock-full of Christmas fixings, like ornaments, pink artificial evergreens, and Lush soap cartons, alongside perennial aisles of paper and books, envelopes, archival photos, all manner of fabric, buttons, beads, and trim. There are also lab coats from hospitals, furniture from the Javits Center, and vintage typewriters and PC towers, CDs and file folders. Full of castoffs of contemporary New York City life just waiting to be plucked from obscurity, the list goes on. The majority of these wares are in pristine condition, and they are all meticulously organized and labeled.
It’s also accessible, for free, to public school students and teachers, as well as art nonprofits.
Can The Bahamas implement a programme such as this. Perhaps Antonius Robert’s Project ICE or the University of The Bahamas art programme could investigate.
Click here to view original web page at How a City Agency Saves New York’s Discarded Objects for Art
