Arts & Culture

New York City is the cultural capital of the world, and Assembly District 66 sits at the heart of that legacy. Our district was the birthplace of countless artistic movements and today is home to world-class museums, galleries, theaters, dance studios, performance spaces, and creative institutions that make New York unlike anywhere else.

This abundant culture is built by the thousands of creative workers who bring New York’s big ideas, bright lights, and public life to the world.

The creative sector remains one of New York City’s greatest economic engines, employing more than 326,000 New Yorkers in 2024. But that workforce has declined by 6.1% since 2019, and nearly 50 theaters, music clubs, museums, and galleries have closed since 2020.

If artists and creative workers cannot afford to build their lives here, New York will lose the very people who make this city the capital of the world.

To preserve New York’s leadership, our state must:

1. Build and preserve affordable artist housing and creative workspaces
   

   New York already has a model that works: Westbeth Artists Housing. Created from the former Bell Laboratories complex in the West Village, Westbeth was conceived in the 1960s as affordable housing and studio space for artists and became one of the country’s first examples of adaptive reuse for artist housing.
   

   In addition to ambitiously addressing our housing affordability crisis, we can:

   • Expand artist-preference housing in dedicated artist housing developments while preserving strong anti-discrimination and fair housing protections.

   • Support nonprofit and community land trust acquisition of small theaters, rehearsal spaces, galleries, and studios at risk of displacement through programs such as the recently proposed NY SPACE program (Saving Performing Arts and Cultural Experiences).

   2. Support Cultural Institutions
   

   The retreat of federal funding, philanthropic support, and declining visitorship across the cultural landscape is a dire crisis for many of New York’s cultural institutions. NYSCA, the state’s cultural grantmaking arm, was only apportioned .043 percent of the state’s overall adopted budget in Fiscal Year ‘26. 
   

   Together, we can:

   • Expand multi-year general operating grants so arts organizations can plan beyond one budget cycle.

   • Prioritize small and midsized cultural organizations by supporting emergency stabilization funding for small venues, galleries, theaters, and community arts spaces facing displacement. 

   • Streamline the state's capital project management by implementing Design-Build and Best Value contracting so that cultural institutions don’t face ubiquitous funding gaps, cost overruns, and threats to project completion. 

   • Increase funding for accessibility improvements, including ADA upgrades, captioning, interpretation, and multilingual programming. 
     

   3. Support Art Workers
   

   New York should not just train the next generation of artists; it's also important that they have the space and opportunity to practice and exhibit their art. 
   

   New York State should:

   • Increase funding for sponsoring organizations that provide support for non-501(c)(3) artist-run gallery spaces and artist-service organizations. 

   • Provide incentives for the build-out of affordable studio space for painters, dancers, sculptors, and digital artists alike. 
     

   4. Community Programming
   

   New Yorkers are hungry for community building and 3rd spaces where they can interact with their environment and each other. This is evidenced by the explosion in organizations like Philosophy Club, The Hive, and other efforts to provide a public space for creative and intellectual collaboration.
   

   To promote this, we can:

   • Improve the funding process so that nonprofits implementing and running community programming receive their grants on time, instead of being forced to take bridge loans or cease operations waiting for promised support.

   • Use state funds and state-owned land to host projects that create community spaces focused on local interaction and conversation.

   • Use funds allocated to the Assembly office to immediately and directly fund public space and conversations inspired by organizations like NYC Philosophy Club, which draws hundreds of New Yorkers weekly to discuss concepts like democracy and justice.

   • Use Assembly office funds to immediately create civic education programming modeled off of, and expanding, Ben’s popular Real Politics (101), which drew tens of thousands of New Yorkers to learn about civics.