Jeanette Ingberman, January 23, 1952-August 24, 2011, photos from 1979 to 2011

NEW YORK- Jeanette Ingberman, the charismatic Co-Founder and Executive Director of the New York City non-profit cultural center Exit Art, died on August 24, 2011 in New York City from complications of leukemia. She was 59.

Ingberman championed the careers of innumerable artists, performers, poets, film and video makers, and musicians. Collaborating with her husband and Exit Art Co-founder and Artistic Director, Papo Colo, Ingberman curated and produced over 175 visual art exhibitions, film and video festivals, and theater pieces that were distinguished by their innovation, creativity, and timeliness. She has overseen the publication of over 30 catalogues, often writing introductions or essays for them. In 1982, Ingberman and Colo established Exit Art as an alternative space, and it is now an organization with galleries, a small theater, and a film auditorium that presents programming distinguished by a diversity that ranges from highly aesthetic art to activist-inspired work exploring environmental, political, and social issues. The history of Exit Art is testimony to Ingberman's intellectual and artistic vision and daring, all of which was matched by her dramatic sense of style and he r magnanimous personality and spirit.

Ingberman was born in Brooklyn on January 23, 1952 to Halina (Helen) and Abraham Ingberman, both émigrés to the United States and survivors of the Holocaust. A native New Yorker of Polish-Jewish descent, Ingberman spoke fluent Yiddish.

Education
Ingberman attended Flatbush Yeshiva High School, received her B.A. in Art History and Studio Art from Brooklyn College, later attending the New York Studio School for Painting and Sculpture to continue her studies in fine arts. While a student, Ingberman was awarded the Helena Rubinstein Fellowship in Museum Studies at the Whitney Museum in 1975. In 1976, she entered Columbia University’s Art History department with plans to study Egyptian art. Upon taking an elective course with the art historian Meyer Schapiro, Ingberman re-oriented her studies to concentrate on Modern Art. Upon receiving her Master’s Degree from Columbia University, she entered the Ph.D. program at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and studied with art historians Linda Nochlin and Rosalind Krauss.

Early Career
While attending graduate school, Ingberman held a number of curatorial positions in New York City cultural institutions. From 1976-1977, Ingberman was an Assistant Curator at the International Center of Photography where she worked with Cornell Capa on the Roman Vishniac photography archive. Ingberman then joined the Brooklyn Museum as a research consultant for one year, and in 1978, was hired by Luis Cancel as the Chief Curator at the Bronx Museum of Art. In 1979, while researching a contemporary art exhibition titled “Private Icons” for the Bronx Museum, Ingberman met artist Papo Colo on a studio visit. It was, as they would recount to friends over the years, love at first sight. United over a shared passion for current issues and contemporary art, Ingberman and Colo began what would become their life-long project of re-inventing “cultural space.” Under the name Exit Art, their first projects together took place in Papo Colo’s studio on Canal Street, beginning in 19 80.

Exit Art: A Love Story
In a 2007 interview, conducted for Exit Art’s 25th anniversary year, Ingberman recalled Exit Art’s artistic beginnings as part of the alternative space movement:

Exit Art first came about when I met Colo while curating a show at the Bronx Museum… The rest is history…. we were in love. We started by doing a series of mail art pieces. It was an edition of two hundred or so… We had this list of curators and art critics--imagine, the art world was so small then… "Octopus" was our first large-scale project… Colo and I invited about 30 artists and poets, people that are now very well known, people like David Hammons, Tehching Hsieh, Vito Acconci, Komar and Melamid, and Quincy Troupe, as well as poets like Pedro Pietri.

And then we did "Illegal America," our first exhibition… The show materialized from our personal research about illegality and censorship…. I had done my master’s thesis at Columbia about art and law.... Here we were, a barely-in-existence organization, and we get a call from the New York Public Library. They were doing a big project on censorship, and we were just little-known, obscure Exit Art. From the beginning we did this major project with the New York Public Library.… So that’s how we started. The alternative space scene had begun about ten years before that, and it was a very exciting moment, to be downtown in SoHo…. Our early shows like "Illegal America" and "Dirty Pictures" were really about specific ideas and issues, and we felt that the ideas we were interested in were not happening in the alternative space scene as it was. 

From 1982 to 1984, Ingberman collaborated with Colo on a series of exhibitions that included "llegal America" and "Dirty Pictures," and they found Martha Wilson’s Franklin Furnace in Tribeca an important venue for their ideas. Exit Art's programs were premised on a commitment to racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual diversity, an approach that they felt filled a void in New York’s contemporary art community. They also featured under-examined cultural topics, providing an alternative history of 20th century art. “Illegal America” (1982), a historical exhibition dealing with the censorship of works by artists and poets, exemplifies these concerns. An Artforum reviewer noted: “Ingberman’s survey affords a certain temporal perspective. It shows, for example, that art’s legality or illegality is fluxional, both dependent on and indicative of the morality of the society at a given time.”

SoHo: 1984-1992
In 1984, Ingberman signed a lease for a 5,000 square foot space on the 8th floor of 578 Broadway, between Houston and Prince Streets. During this period, Exit Art mounted a series of critically acclaimed retrospective exhibitions of emerging artists, many of whom have since become established figures, such as Ida Applebroog, Willie Birch, Jimmie Durham, Jane Hammond, David Hammons, Hachivi Edgar Heap of Birds, Nancy Grossman, Jerry Kearns, Tehching Hsieh, Adrian Piper, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Juan Sanchez, Krzysztof Wodiczko, David Wojnarowicz and Martin Wong. These projects led to an ambitious undertaking, “Parallel History: The Hybrid State” (1991), a project that examined the impact of multiculturalism on mainstream American culture and featured a number of artists whose careers Ingberman had fostered. “Parallel History” also proved to be a metaphor for Ingberman and Colo’s relationship, and for the unique relationships they cultivated with artists: “We come from t wo different continents, two different religions, speak different languages,” Ingberman said. “It’s not supposed to work, but we work very well together. Because of that attitude, the artists too are very collective and collaborative. We create the stage for them to [work together], and they do in a very beautiful, positive way."

Exit Art / The First World: 1992-2002
In 1992, Exit Art expanded into an entire floor of a loft building at 548 Broadway, and changed its name to Exit Art/The First World, a critique of the perception that multicultural artists are marginalized as “third world.” Ingberman and Colo turned their attention to a new generation of artists by visiting more than 100 artist studios over a six-month period and selecting more than 30 for inclusion in Exit Art/The First World’s inaugural show “Fever” (1992). Michael Kimmelman said of the exhibition in a 1992 article for The New York Times: “The event has about it a sense of optimism and experimentation. And in its scale, eclecticism and riskiness, it is an ideal show to inaugurate the new gallery.”

Among the artists that Ingberman followed over a decade, and featured frequently in exhibitions, were Patty Chang, Nicole Eisenman, Inka Essenhigh, Rachel Harrison, Julie Mehretu, Shirin Neshat, Roxy Paine, David Sandlin, Seth Tobocman, Fred Tomaselli, and Rirkrit Tiravanija. At the same time, Ingberman began collaborating with Colo on a new in-residence theater project, Trickster Theater, whose performances sometimes merged with the exhibition program. Ingberman also staged some of Exit Art’s most provocative projects, particularly “Let the Artist Live” (1994) and “La Tradicíon: Performing Painting” (1997), for which artists used the gallery as their home and studio for the duration of the exhibitions. Ingberman’s interest in process informed one of her most widely acclaimed exhibitions, “Endurance” (1995), which focused on performance actions that tested the body’s mental, physical, and emotional limits. The year that it opened, “Endurance” won an Obie Award for Be st Exhibition in an Alternative Space. Ingberman also organized the celebrated 2002 exhibition “Reactions,” which collected 2,500 letters, drawings, emails, and faxes from people around the world in a collective response to the events of September 11. Exit Art later donated the contents of the exhibition to the Library of Congress.

Exit Art in Hell’s Kitchen: 2003-2011
With the cost of real estate in SoHo proving untenable, Exit Art moved to a ground floor space on Tenth Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen, opening with the exhibition “Reconstruction,” for which nearly 50 artists created site-specific projects that evolved continually over the duration of the show. The New York Times called “Reconstruction” one of the 10 best shows of 2003 and wrote of Exit Art’s new venue: “Some art centers are born with well-defined missions in mind and sizable budgets to help make their most ambitious programming dreams come true. Others are fueled more by can-do spirit and make-do inventiveness… And then there are the offbeat, sometimes more impulsive art outposts that pop up and, despite the odds, hang on for years and unexpectedly become important, even treasured institutions. Exit Art/The First World is one such irascible survivor.”

In the years following Exit Art’s move, Ingberman and Colo sought to expand the boundaries of their explorations of contemporary culture and to incorporate more international artists into their programming. Using the Internet as a tool, Ingberman and Colo formed exhibitions utilizing their new curatorial method, ConceptPlus, whereby artists submitted a proposal in response to a given theme. In this way, the exhibition program became more broadly inclusive, democratic, and experimental. ConceptPlus exhibitions, such as “L Factor” (2003), “Terrorvision” (2004), “The Presidency” (2004), “Homo Museum” (2005), and “The Drop” (2006) brought together groups of established and under-recognized artists. Solo exhibitions of artists Charles Juhasz-Alvarado (2008) and Regina Jose Galindo (2009), as well as a forthcoming show of work by Rico Gatson, are examples of Exit Art’s continued commitment to presenting the work of important mid-career artists. Ingberman and Colo also coll aborated with local and international curators, mounting exhibitions from such areas as Russia, Korea, and the Balkans, as well as large-scale historical shows, such as “Counterculture: Alternative Information from the Underground Press to the Internet” (1996) and “Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now” (2008), which reflected Exit Art’s interest in documenting political concerns and the power of art to transform society. Exit Art even turned an eye on its own history, organizing the celebrated 2010 exhibition “Alternative Histories,” which chronicled New York alternative art spaces since the 1960s.

Continuing the exhibition program and projects of the Trickster Theater, Ingberman and Colo began a second gallery initiative, SEA (Social-Environmental Aesthetics), which focuses on artists and activists whose work addresses environmental questions and social responsibility. Most recently, they fulfilled their vision to establish a new destination for digital cinema in Manhattan, launching Digimovies, a 70-seat digital theater in Exit Art’s basement space.

Visions for the Future
Beginning in 2008, Ingberman and Colo merged art, environmental awareness, and their love of his native Puerto Rico, by constructing a sustainably built, retreat center near El Yunque, a tropical rain forest in Puerto Rico. Jeanette's dream was to establish the center as a meditative meeting place for activists, scientists, artists, scholars, and writers for reflection and inspiration—a goal which her friends and colleagues are committed to completing.

Of her long-term partnership with Papo Colo, Ingberman said, “For me, one of the lucky things about partnering with an artist, or maybe I should just say with Colo, is that was always able to see way beyond. So I thought we were jumping off a cliff, but he thought we were just continuing. It still feels like we’re constantly jumping off a cliff.”

Jeanette Ingberman is survived by her husband, the artist Papo Colo; a brother, Israel Ingberman and sister-in-law Terry Ryan; nieces; nephews; and numerous friends and colleagues.

Jeanette Ingberman's funeral will be held in Puerto Rico. A public memorial will be held in the future at a date to be announced.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Exit Art on behalf of the El Yunque Rain Forest Project. Dontations can be made HERE.