The Boiler is a gallery in Williamsburg operating as a nonprofit in a former factory boiler room with forty-foot ceilings. Since opening in 2009, it has hosted large-scale installations and now runs Steam Works, an arts education program.
Forty-foot ceilings in a former factory boiler room set the terms here from the start. When The Boiler opened in March 2009 (under Joe Amrhein and Susan Swensen of Pierogi Gallery) the scale wasn't incidental; it was the point. The space gave artists room that no white cube could: Tavares Strachan hauled 2.5 tons of Arctic ice into the building for the inaugural show. After Pierogi's exit in 2019, the building didn't close: it reoriented. Now operating independently as a nonprofit under the ELM Foundation, The Boiler has extended its program into arts education through Steam Works, pairing each exhibition with free workshops led by the exhibiting artist. The question it keeps asking: what does a gallery owe its neighborhood, not just its collectors.
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