Bronx Museum Leads Borough’s Renaissance
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

When Holly Block left the downtown arts venue Art in General to run the Bronx Museum of the Arts in 2006, many of her friends told her she was crazy. The museum was in serious trouble: It had almost no base of private support, had been running deficits for three years, and was about to open a new building that it didn’t have the funds to operate.
But Ms. Block, who had worked at the museum as a curator in the late 1980s, believed strongly in its mission of collecting Latin-American, Asian-American, African-American, and Bronx-based artists. After 18 years at Art in General, she was ready for a change and believed she could help turn the museum’s fortunes around.
Two years later, she has worked little less than a miracle: The new building, designed by the Miami firm Arquitectonica, is open and running. The museum has more than quadrupled its private fund raising and has run surpluses for two years in a row. This year’s gala, in May, raised $140,000 — an almost 40% increase over last year. The museum’s re-energized board, expanded to 19 members from 14, donated an additional $100,000.
“Holly’s amazing,” the board chairman, Douglass Rice, said. “She’s well-respected; she’s smart; she has incredible contacts. Where she goes, a lot of funders want to follow.”
The road to financial stability wasn’t easy. In her first few months, Ms. Block had to cut the museum’s staff to 22 from 28 and only program in part of the new building.
“That time period was the worst,” Ms. Block said of the fall of 2006.
Today, the museum has brought its staff back up to 25. In the last year, it raised around $250,000 in private donations. It also earned $75,000 in revenue from rentals in its two buildings, a 200% increase over the previous year.
“Holly has a personal charisma and an ability to make the museum’s mission understandable, so people believe in her and in what she sets forth,” another trustee, the executive director of the Art Dealers Association of America, Linda Blumberg, said. “It’s one thing to do that at the Met, where you have those hallowed halls and all the resources and the glamour,” she continued. “It’s quite another thing to do it in the Bronx.”
The commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Kate Levin, praised Ms. Block for successfully shepherding the museum through the opening of its expansion, “which has helped sustain and grow the museum’s audience by providing new space for exhibitions, education programs and community outreach initiatives. Holly and her team have also stabilized the balance sheet through sound financial management and outreach to new funders,” Ms. Levin said.
However, for a museum that still depends on the city for most of its funding, there are more challenges ahead. The Department of Cultural Affairs informed Ms. Block last week that, as part of citywide budget cuts, it is reducing the museum’s base operating budget by roughly 3.5%, to $587,258. Two City Council members, Helen Foster and Joel Rivera, helped make up for the shortfall by allocating $30,000 in line items. Ms. Block is still waiting to hear whether the museum will get any capital funding, or any part of the DCA’s $1 million “supplemental” fund, which will be distributed among the city-owned cultural institutions. She said she had not yet made any decisions about how to absorb the cuts, but said that she hoped the museum would not have to cut staff.
In the meantime, Ms. Block remains committed to expanding the ways in which the museum serves its audience, half of whom are younger than 18. She moved exhibition openings to Sundays from Wednesdays so that more people could attend. Last year, the museum purchased several lots in the back of its property, in order to tear down abandoned buildings that were both dangerous and an eyesore, Ms. Block said. The museum will turn the area into a youth activity garden, where children can learn about both art and the environment. An existing tree will be preserved as the centerpiece of the new garden.
“The Bronx is full of pavement,” Ms. Block said. “It has some of the highest rates of asthma in the city, and the highest levels of pollutants.” She said she hopes the garden will be both a refuge and a place of inspiration. “A lot of artists were heavily influenced by nature,” she said.
Currently, with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, the museum is working on a long-term strategic plan, which will likely include razing its original building, a former synagogue, and selling air rights to a developer to build a mixed-use tower. Ideally, Mr. Rice said, the tower would be moderate-income housing, and the museum would get 30,000 square feet for galleries, an auditorium, and revenue-generating businesses such as a bookstore and café.
Although some analysts are predicting a decline in the New York real estate market, “We’re going ahead with planning process and [talking] to a lot of developers,” Mr. Rice said. “I’m an eternal optimist.”
Ms. Block, who is the author of a book about Cuban artists called “Art Cuba: The Next Generation,” is also committed to building relationships with artists outside of America. The museum recently got a federal grant to expand its Artists in the Marketplace career development program to offer residencies to international artists. Early participants will come from Venezuela, Brazil, Senegal, South Africa, and Egypt, Ms. Block said.
In addition to Artists in the Marketplace, which in 28 years has served more than 1,000 artists, the museum is known for its education programs, including its Teen Council, whose members this year organized their own exhibition in the museum, of the photographer Jamel Shabazz.
In September, the museum will present an exhibition called “Street Art, Street Life: From the 1950s to Now,” organized by a former curator, Lydia Yee, who is now a curator at the Barbican Art Gallery in London. It will include work by artists such as Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Vito Acconci, Martha Rosler, and Francis Alÿs. The museum and the Public Art Fund will also co-commission new works that will spill out onto the Grand Concourse. Half a dozen foundations provided funding for the exhibition, and the catalog is being co-published with Aperture.
In 2009, to mark the centennial of the opening of the Grand Concourse, the museum will present a yearlong exhibition about the concourse’s history. It will host an online international competition for new architectural projects along the Grand Concourse. The 10 finalists will receive stipends to construct models, which will be displayed at the museum in November.
And though her job is hardly easy, Ms. Block suggested that she considers herself lucky to be running the museum at this time in its and the neighborhood’s history. “The Renaissance is just beginning in the Bronx,” she said, with obvious pride.