2011
Shandaken Projects was founded by a peer group of artists and art workers in November, 2011 in response to increasing gentrification in urban crucibles of creative production, increased focus on the marketplace in contemporary art (as the financial sector recovered from the recession of 2008), and the grassroots spirit of Occupy. Initially called The Shandaken Project, this collective effort by a community of cultural practitioners began with a residency program: a free, open-ended opportunity for artists to focus on process. Forty-seven founding members signed up for Shandaken's limited edition program, which kicked off with sculptures by Margaret Lee.
2012
In the winter of 2012, founding director Nicholas Weist signed the organization's first lease, at 300 Route 42 in Shandaken, NY. The first campus would include a small, furnished house, a decrepit barn, and over 250 acres of untamed meadows and wild forest. Situated on the plateau of a small mountain surrounded by State land, the estate was well suited for privacy and reflection, but had ready access to services in nearby Phoenicia.
Shandaken held its first capital campaign that spring, to fund the construction of three studios and to set up an ad hoc office in New York City. Artist Vito Acconci, curator Bob Nickas, and critic Vince Aletti made mixtapes in support of the campaign. With the promise to make blueprints for its studios free and available to the public, Shandaken exceeded its goal of $16,000 and satisfied set-up costs for its first season. By leaning heavily on volunteer labor to keep operating costs to the bare minimum, memberships and other donations satisfied an additional $17,654 in operating costs for that year. That April, Shandaken accepted its first cohort.
Later that summer, Shandaken presented its first collaboration with the Center for Experimental Lectures. This program grew to become an annual tradition attended by hundreds each year, until its final edition in 2016.
2013
While Shandaken's residency and upstate public programs were becoming well known, it was still operating on skeletal budgets, with no year-round staff. Its members agreed that opportunities for artists were still crucially needed, and alumni reported that Shandaken had produced transformative experiences—but without paid staff, the organization was in danger of collapsing. Shandaken's officers began to examine how to grow an organization that was firmly committed to the idea of small-scale, community-focused cultural production.
To raise awareness of the organization and communicate a sense of the power of process-led inquiry to a wider audience, Shandaken began producing "Pillow Talks" in New York City. This free lecture series invited alumni to create pedagogy about topics of interest related to their work—upending the traditional format of the slide presentation, and giving audience members an intimate sense of artists' idiosyncratic intellectual frameworks.
2014
Shandaken planned its first auction in the late winter of 2014. Making the unusual choice to offer participants a significant percentage of their sales, Shandaken secured work by Terry Winters, Jordan Wolfson, and many others in support of its free residency program. Now staffed by a full-time director, Shandaken offered more programs than ever this year, including a week-long, retreat-style think tank about queer theory and cultural production; and a retrospective exhibition with work by over 60 alumni and friends of the organization.
In the fall of this year, Shandaken received its full 501(c)3 designation and also became a founding member of Rethinking Residencies, a working group of prestigious New York-based artist residencies who share knowledge and resources, while cultivating critical thinking and discourse about the residency experience.
With Shandaken's lease term on the upstate campus nearing its end, it began to search for a new home.
2015
In short order, Shandaken began collaborating with Storm King Art Center to bring the residency program to that institution's historic and well-loved campus in Mountainville, NY. In a radical departure from the isolated context of the central Catskills, artists would now be offered the opportunity to live on the grounds of a major sculpture park, and work in proximity to its significant collection. Hundreds of artists applied for the inaugural year of Shandaken: Storm King, of which 17 were offered residencies.
In tandem with the residency, Shandaken and Storm King also began collaborating on the latter’s “Wanderings and Wonderings” series, begun in 2013. This program invited artists to create unique tours of Storm King. Shandaken's annual Labor Day Weekend collaboration also began to feature contributions programmed by Adult Contemporary, adding pedagogy by noted academics to a heavily artist-focused roster.
2016
To celebrate its fifth anniversary, Shandaken published its first institutional monograph: Jokes for the Campfire, presenting humor by more than 50 alumni and friends. As Hudson Valley programs Shandaken: Storm King, Wanderings and Wonderings, and the Labor Day Weekend Lecture Series became more established and visible, Shandaken's New York City programming picked up steam as well.
2017
Paint School, a fellowship program for New York City-area painters, opened in the fall of this year. The first of its kind in the city, Paint School brought together lions of the field such as Faith Ringgold, Howardena Pindell, Byron Kim, Ian Altaveer, and more, to create lecture-based seminars for the city's next generation of important artists. These seminars were held throughout New York City at host institutions including Abrons Art Center, The Cooper Union, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York University, and Triple Canopy—and edited transcriptions were published as an ongoing series in the print edition of Art in America.
Also in 2017, Phillips Auction House produced a look back at the past six years of Shandaken, in the form of a group exhibition at their midtown headquarters. Shandaken: Storm King welcomed a record 19 residents and presented 4 new works by alumni as part of Wanderings and Wonderings. The 2017-18 seasons of Shandaken: Storm King enjoyed generous lead support from The Pollock-Krasner Foundation and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
2018
Shandaken: Governors Island opened in fall 2018, offering five New York City–based cultural practitioners free studio space for one year each, in Building 107 on Governors Island in New York Harbor. This important opportunity was produced in partnership with the Trust for Governors Island. An exhibition of work by fellows of the inaugural year of Paint School was presented at The Flag Art Foundation. Shandaken: Storm King welcomed 17 artists, and the Flag Art. Foundation hosted an exhibition for the first cohort of Paint School. The second cohort of Paint School met at universities throughout New York City, led by luminaries of contemporary art such as Jennie Jones and Josephine Halvorson.
2019
The second cohort of Shandaken: Governors Island residents offered major public programs this year, such as a guided tour of New York Harbor via rowboat, and the fourth cohort of Shandaken: Storm King also presented notable projects through Wanderings and Wonderings. Paint School continued this year, with an end-of-term exhibition at Klaus Von Nichtssagend Gallery.
2020
The Covid pandemic interrupted most Shandaken initiatives early in this year. Paint School's last cohort finished out their term remotely over Zoom, and several artist presentations were also delivered online. Shandaken: Storm King deferred all applications but welcomed select alumni back onsite for individual residencies, and Shandaken: Governors Island was also able to welcome five alumni back for three-month-long opportunities for free studio space in Nolan Park's Building 6A. Shandaken wins a separate RFP by the Trust for Governors to assume control of the top floor of Nolan Park's Building 9, and prepares to move early the following year.
2021
The first program in Building 9 marks a major new step for Shandaken, which begins to work with nonprofessional artists for the first time. The organization's new Youth Intensive, which would become an annual offering, paid teenagers from New York City public schools a living wage to attend art classes with a focus on printmaking's intersections with social justice. The first cycle of the Youth Intensive was a collaboration with Hunter's MFA department—each teen was paired with a graduate student who mentored them.
Upon conclusion of the Youth Intensive, Shandaken: Governors Island reopened in its new home, becoming the first opportunity for any individual to live full time on Governors Island since the departure of the Coast Guard in 1996. Opportunities for three months of free room and board on-island begin to be offered year round. Building 9 offers far more space than Building 107, so one small room is set aside to house Shandaken's new Risograph—an offset printmaking tool that would, in short order, revolutionize the organization's capacities and offerings to artists.
Shandaken's important new initiative 14x48 is also unveiled in 2021. Opening with a commissioned work by Josh Kline, the program presents new artworks on commercial billboards throughout New York City. It was seen by an estimated 500,000 people in the course of its exhibition. The next work in the 14x48 series, by Jonathan Lyndon Chase, was selected from open-call RFP.
Rethinking Residencies, the working group of which Shandaken was a founding member, produces a symposium on the subject of residency administration, in collaboration with NYSCA. Shandaken Projects' director Nicholas Weist co-authors the introduction to the new book Bringing Worlds Together, which collected writing from and related to the symposium in a paperback released to the trade.
Shandaken: Storm King continues in a limited capacity, again welcoming alumni back onsite for individual opportunities. Shandaken partners with artist Emily Mae Smith and her new gallery Petzel on the sale of a major new painting at Christie's auction house, stabilizing the organization's finances with the creation of a substantial cash reserve.
2022
Shandaken: Storm King reopens in full, awarding 14 artists residencies, and Shandaken: Governors Island and 14x48 both continue. A new continuation education opportunity debuts, called How to Riso. This day-long workshop for professional artists is the first chance that the general public has to access the organization's printmaking equipment.
The second cycle of the summertime Youth Intensive is so successful, Shandaken adds a winter cycle to the calendar. It also inspires artist Maggie Hazen to invite Shandaken to lead a printmaking workshop for incarcerated youth in Columbia County, NY. Artworks that result from this initiative are exhibited in Catskill, NY later that summer.
2023
Work with incarcerated individuals becomes a major focus of Shandaken's educational offerings, upon receipt of a contract with Arts In Corrections NYS, a NYSCA regrant program facilitated by the nonprofit organization Wave Farm, in collaboration with NYS DOCCS. Shandaken begins to program weekly art classes inside of Sullivan County Correctional Facility.
An interest to exhibit artwork by incarcerated individuals on billboards near the facilities in which the artists live blossoms into to a major exhibition organized by Shandaken Projects at the Athens Cultural Center in Athens, NY. Artworks by incarcerated and non-incarcerated individuals appear on billboards, in mailboxes, in public parks, and in a formal exhibition space in a wide-ranging group show that examines creative use of public space. In addition to the billboards presented as part of that show, Shandaken partners with Bard College on a juried opportunity for undergraduate artists to exhibit an artwork on a billboard near the school.
The experience of working in Upstate NY reveals to Shandaken staff that infrastructure and services are sorely needed by the wave of professional artists who relocated there during Covid. In late fall 2023, the organization closes Shandaken: Governors Island and relocates that program's infrastructure to Catskill, NY. The new program Shandaken: Catskill offers artists room and board along with the opportunity to learn to make prints and publications in a fully equipped studio.
Shandaken: Storm King creates a new opportunity for artists to be in residence with their children and families, or in collaborative groups. The Youth Intensive continues.
2024
The Arts In Corrections program continues in Sullivan County until the closure of that facility in October, whereupon it moves to Coxsackie Correctional Facility. Shandaken: Storm King continues, returning to its cohort format. A second partnership with Bard College presents another student artwork on a billboard nearby, and two billboards by SHABOOM!, a collaborative group who had been in residence at Shandaken: Storm King the year prior, are presented on the occasion of their exhibition at Art Omi, in partnership with that institution.
Shandaken: Catskill continues, and the organization releases three new publications made onsite by artists.
2025 and beyond
Shandaken: Storm King, Shandaken: Catskill, the Youth Intensive, and Shandaken's Arts In Corrections program all continue. The organization publishes new books including a reprint of its 2016 classic Jokes for the Campfire.