Bedford + Bowery: Bushwick Art Scene Champion Norte Maar Has a New Home in East New York
By Nicole Disser
August 12, 2015
“Bushwick is on its own, she doesn’t need our help anymore,” laughed Jason Andrew, co-founder of Norte Maar. “She really doesn’t need our help anymore.” Though neither he nor his partner, Julia K. Gleich, have quit the neighborhood entirely, they’ve taken what to many was a quintessentially Bushwick arts organization (see: Beat Nite, the biannual art party at galleries and studios throughout the neighborhood the organization has begotten) and moved its headquarters to East New York. “Our plight is the same as everybody else’s in New York, we just want to try and find a way to stay here,” Jason said.
Norte Maar’s programming has expanded since it was founded in 2004 – the non-profit was originally located in a small town upstate closer to Montreal than Brooklyn – and while most people probably know the small arts organization as the backer of Beat Nite, they’ve had their hand in events happening all over the city and beyond. Those include a dance and choreography program at Socrates Sculpture Park and Brooklyn Combine and a performance in conjunction with the Brooklyn Museum’s borough-centric exhibition earlier this year, Crossing Brooklyn: Art from Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Beyond.
Their programming is so varied that sometimes it’s hard to keep up with what Jason and Julia actually do. But they say their central mission as an organization is to provide artists with opportunities for collaboration and visibility, as well as grant the public (but also private collectors and curators) access to artists’ work. “We’re really a very flexible organization,” Julia explained. “The idea of it is built around collaborations.”
