It’s art versus art at Carnegie Hall. In May, the venue’s leadership announced that the leases of tenants in the adjoining Studio Towers would not be renewed. Now it has moved aggressively to empty the more than 50 units situated above the concert halls, beginning eviction proceedings in July. But the tenants, many of whom have lived and worked there for decades, are putting up a legal fight and will air their concerns to local politicians at a meeting in the studios this evening.

The battle is not the classic New York story of landlord against tenants. Instead, it pits longtime residents, many of them elderly and still working in the arts, against a concert hall they love. Carnegie Hall intends to house its growing education programs in the towers after extensive renovation to begin in 2009.

“We understand they need the space, but something is missing,” photographer Josef Astor said.

Mr. Astor has occupied a multi-level studio on the eighth floor since 1985. His 22-year tenancy notwithstanding, he is one of the newer people in the building. He is also middle-aged, which makes him among the youngest.

Upstairs and across the way in the south tower is 95-year-old Editta Sherman, whose door advertises her work in “celebrity camera portraits.” She has lived and worked there since 1949, back when it was easy to rent space in the building. “Many studios were available,” she said. “It was surprising. People just didn’t move in. And they used to advertise — a full page!”

Nicknamed the Duchess of Carnegie Hall long ago by her neighbor, photographer Bill Cunningham, Ms. Sherman raised her five children in the duplex space whose 30-foot ceilings are capped with an enormous skylight. Oversize black-and-white portraits of the many Carnegie Hall musicians she has shot are propped against the mirrored walls with her photos of a few others, including Henry Fonda and Andy Warhol.

“She needs a studio. She’s still working,” Ms. Sherman’s daughter, Carole Sherman, said as her mother gamely posed for a Sun photographer. “After 58 years, she’s part of Carnegie Hall. That’s her identity.”

Carnegie Hall executive and artistic director Clive Gillinson was unavailable to speak about the studios’ renovation, but the hall’s public relations office emailed a statement similar to that used in a May press release. “These renovation plans have grown out of a comprehensive examination of our physical space as we work to take the hall into the twenty-first century,” Mr. Gillinson said. “Our responsibility is to ensure that it remains as important to the future of music as it has been to the past.”

Arlene Boop, the lawyer representing 28 tenants, said the hall is seeking a permit to demolish the inside of the towers, but she does not believe such a demolition is a sure thing. Demolition — one of the ways to get an exemption to rent control and rent stabilization protections — cannot begin as long as the approximately eight rent-controlled tenants remain scattered throughout the building.

“If they can’t get the rent-control tenants out, why are they getting anybody out?” asked Ms. Boop, who hopes the politicians at tonight’s meeting will be able to add some strength to the tenants’ side of the fight. “There are competing interests here. One way to resolve them is in the political arena.”

Painter Senen Ubiña, 83, has a studio next door to Ms. Sherman, but lives on the Upper East Side. After three decades on and off at Carnegie Hall, he is upset by the antagonism in what feels to him like a family. But he isn’t imperiled by the situation.

“I don’t want to move,” he said. “For me it’s a pain because I have to find a place.”