The celebrated artist Yoko Ono, widow of John Lennon, grew philosophical Monday night when she accepted an honor from the Kitchen, the modest yet internationally recognized home in Chelsea for avant-garde artists.

“I think it is so interesting to be alive,” Ms. Ono said. “Some people think it’s going to be doomsday soon. If that is the case, then let’s just have fun. Of course I hope that’s not the case.”

Doomsday seems a long way off for the Kitchen – although that hasn’t always been so. In the early 1990s, arts lovers were wondering if the Kitchen would sink.

Today, however, the interdisciplinary performance space is on a revitalization streak, thanks to a new executive director, Debra Singer, who arrived last fall after seven years as a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Ms. Singer immediately revamped the Kitchen’s marketing and publicity materials and cut ticket prices. Attendance is up. Last week, her first exhibit opened: a video and sound installation by Matthew Buckingham and Joachim Koester, titled “Sandra of the Tuliphouse or How to Live in a Free State.”

Restoring the prominence of the visual arts is one of Ms. Singer’s goals. “The Kitchen came out of the art world but it was quite distanced from the art world for a while. I’m working on that relationship,” Ms. Singer said.

Being true to the Kitchen’s original mission is important to her. “The Kitchen started small, and I want it to remain small,” Ms. Singer said, “because that’s the key to remaining true to the Kitchen’s innovative spirit and risk-taking mission.” The nonprofit organization currently has an annual budget of $1.6 million.

Ms. Singer is also focused on introducing the Kitchen to a new generation of artists and patrons. As the young faces at the benefit demonstrated, she’s already made a lot of headway. Melissa and Robert Soros, an art-collecting couple with young children, served as co-chairmen of the event, while several artists in their 20s and 30s presented work at the event, including the members of the hula-hooping troupe GrooveHoops; musicians Susie Ibarra, Roberto Rodriguez, and Sean Lennon; Bec Stupak of the video art collective Honeygun Labs, and composer and musician Daniel Bernard Roumain, who performed with his mentor, Philip Glass.

These artists reflect the diversity of programming at the Kitchen, something else Ms. Singer is closely examining. “I’m recalibrating the balance among the disciplines, and also the balance of established and emerging figures,” she said.

Most of all, Ms. Singer wants to make sure artists have the space, the funds, and the technical assistance to pursue their work. “New York is not an easy place for artists to make work, so that’s our job: to support them, to be responsive to their needs,” she said.

The event at the Puck Building, which raised $400,000, honored Ms. Ono as well as a printmaker and jazz pianist, Caroline Stone Keating, who has been on the Kitchen’s board for 30 years. What does she like about the Kitchen? “I like the fact that people dare to do what’s new,” she said. “That’s how you build the culture of the future.”

Her husband, Rod Keating, had a different take: “I have a monkey mind. When I go to the Kitchen, the monkeys get going. I do my best thinking there.”

The artist Jane Hammond said the Kitchen was a “a source of creative energy.”

Another artist, Sarah Kornfeld, said: “It unflinchingly stands by artists who are willing to fail.”