“There is no venue in New York City that has the potential creative flexibility that the Armory possesses. At a time when artists are searching for unconventional spaces and initiating large-scale mixed media projects, the Armory would fill a huge void in the City.”   - Harvey Lichtenstein, BAM

Part palace, part industrial shed, Park Avenue Armory fills a critical void in the cultural ecology of New York by enabling artists to create, and the public to experience, unconventional work that could not otherwise be mounted in traditional performance halls and museums. With its soaring 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall—reminiscent of 19th-century European train stations—and array of exuberant period rooms, the Armory inspires artists to draw upon its grand scale and distinctive character and captivates audiences with its ability to provide intense, dramatic, intimate, and immersive experiences.

Since its first production in September 2007—Aaron Young’s Greeting Card, a 9,216-square-foot “action” painting created by the burned-out tire marks of ten choreographed motorcycles presented with Art Production Fund—the Armory has organized a series of immersive performances, installations, and works of art that have drawn critical and popular attention, among them: Bernd Zimmermann’s epic opera Die Soldaten; Ariane Mnouchkine’s les Éphémères and Declan Donnellan’s Boris Godunov, with the 2008 and 2009 Lincoln Center Festivals; the U.S. premiere of Heiner Goebbels’ Stifters Dinge with Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series; the 2008 Whitney Biennial with site-specific installations and performances by 37 artists; and an evening of Stravinsky’s Sacred Masterpieces presented in association with Columbia University’s Miller Theatre. The Armory’s annual art commissioning program, launched in 2009, has presented to date two monumental site-specific installations: Ernesto Neto’s anthropodino, a multi-sensory labyrinth of fabric and spice, and Christian Boltanski’s contemplative and deeply moving No Man’s Land.