LIC RUG WAREHOUSE

In Long Island City, New York, where the Rainforest Art Foundation has been located since 2008 (after its founding in 2001), we are reopening of the Marlene Yu Museum there as well. That building, a former rug warehouse, was transformed by James Yu, winning the Queens Chamber of Commerce Building Design and Construction Award as a light-filled gallery, studio, and exhibition space.

Ironically, the warehouse’s original extra-wide elevator, used to transport rugs, turned out to be perfect for Marlene’s massive, rolled canvases. We eventually had to replace the elevator to meet NYC building codes, but the spirit of creative adaptation lives on.

As the Museum opens in New York in October, it features:

• Main exhibition hall and gift shop on the first floor

• Rainforest Art Foundation gallery on the second floor

• Marlene Yu’s working studio on the third floor

We envision a space that goes beyond exhibition—a place for film screenings, workshops, performances, and interactive community art. Much like the Kids Can, We Can: Oceans of Adaptation program we created at the Rainforest Art Foundation—where children and their caregivers decorate and assemble different types of fish made out of plastic water bottles, adding them to a growing reef installation—we welcome people of all ages to contribute to something bigger than themselves.