Independent Arts News Reporting Announcing the Launch of ArtYard's 10th Anniversary Celebrations
Reported on Friday, September 18, 2026.
Pictured Above: ArtYard’s 10th Anniversary Celebrations. Photo Credit: Contributed.
NEWSROOM POST: FRENCHTOWN, NEW JERSEY
Join ArtYard in Frenchtown, NJ this fall to celebrate a decade of championing artistic experimentation and the transformational power of creative collaboration
Frenchtown, NJ — ArtYard will begin celebrating its 10th anniversary this fall with a season of exhibitions, performances, artist residencies, workshops, and community gatherings that reflect the organization’s commitment to experimentation, collaboration, and shared creative experiences, as well as its inaugural Tin Anniversary Gala.
The season brings together artists working across visual art, music, dance, theater, and community-based practice, with three new exhibitions opening Oct. 24 featuring new works by Lonnie Holley, Dean Millien, and Jude Tallichet.
Celebrating a decade of impact
ArtYard’s Tin Anniversary Gala celebrates 10 years of artists taking risks, communities coming together, and bold ideas taking shape in Frenchtown. Named for the traditional symbol of a 10th anniversary, the Tin Anniversary Gala will bring together artists, supporters, members, and friends for an evening of dinner, performance, and celebration. The gala will recognize two distinguished Culture Bearers, Isabella Rossellini and Julio Torres, whose creative practices exemplify the expansive spirit of artistic experimentation and cultural exchange that ArtYard fosters. The evening will also feature pop-up performances and appearances throughout the celebration, and the occasion will be marked by the opening of an additional exhibition celebrating the anniversary.
“This anniversary gives us the opportunity to look back at everything that has been built here over the past 10 years and to imagine the next 10 years,” said Jill Kearney, ArtYard Founder and Executive Director. “Our fall season brings together so many of the things that are central to ArtYard — supporting artists through residencies, presenting ambitious exhibitions and performances, and creating opportunities for people to come together and participate. We’re excited to celebrate this moment with everyone who has helped make ArtYard what it is.”
The gala is chaired by Thom Collins & Matthew Goodrich, Jacqui & David Griffith, Cheryl Hazan & Marti Sagar, Stephen McDonnell, Happy & Sam Shipley, and Amy Stone & Lawrence Tingley, with Governor Thomas H. Kean serving as Honorary Chair.
Exhibitions
At the center of the fall season are three exhibitions opening October 24 – Lonnie Holley’s How We Got Over, Dean Millien and Jude Tallichet’s Gleam, and National Portrait Beauty Gallery, a collaboration between ArtYard and Studio Route 29. Together, the exhibitions bring different artistic practices into conversation around memory, material, imagination, identity, and the ways people see and connect with one another. The exhibitions open with a free public reception on Saturday, October 24, from 6 to 8 PM, with artists and curators in attendance.
How We Got Over includes new works developed during Lonnie Holley’s summer residency at ArtYard, alongside selections spanning his remarkable career. For more than five decades, Holley has devoted his life to improvisational creativity. Working across sculpture, assemblage, painting, drawing, photography, music, and film, he transforms found materials into richly layered works that commemorate people, places, and events, revealing histories embedded within everyday objects. Holley returns for a live performance on the McDonnell Theater stage on Sunday, October 18 and he will also offer an artist talk on the day after How We Got Over opens, at 12 PM on Sunday, October 25.
In Gleam, artists Dean Millien and Jude Tallichet transform aluminum foil into imaginary creatures, childhood companions, and objects that seem to teeter between beauty and collapse. Their shiny, reflective surfaces invite questions about memory, waste, desire, and imagination. Much of Millien’s work in the exhibition was created during a residency partnership between ArtYard and Studio Route 29. Millien and Tallichet will discuss their work and the exhibition in an artist talk at 11 AM on Sunday, October 25.
Presented across ArtYard’s Courtyard Gallery at 13 Front Street and Studio Route 29’s Beauty Gallery at 62A Trenton Avenue in Frenchtown, National Portrait Beauty Gallery considers portraiture as both a historical instrument of power and an enduring way of paying attention to other people. The exhibition brings together portraits by artists working across different contemporary contexts, many of whom are based in supported studios for artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities. It celebrates these studios as places of partnership, friendship, and allyship, where creative practices and relationships develop together.
Live Performance
ArtYard’s fall season features concerts, dance, theater, and residency presentations bringing artists and audiences together in the McDonnell Theater.
The season opens with Keigwin + Company’s Stage Door – ArtYard on September 25, the culmination of the company’s Works & Process residency at ArtYard. Artistic Director Larry Keigwin and Co-Choreographer Nicole Wolcott explore acceptance, aging, and finding your place in the world through the lens of the audition. The performance features K+C dancers and more than 30 local community members.
Music takes center stage in October with Dom Flemons’ The Bronze Buckaroo Film & Songster Show on October 2, combining live music with scenes from the 1939 film The Bronze Buckaroo, an all-Black cast Western that offered rare representation of Black cowboys on the silver screen. On October 9, Venezuelan-born trumpeter, composer, and multidisciplinary artist Ella Bric brings her fusion of Afro-Venezuelan rhythms, Latin jazz, improvisation, and electronic experimentation to ArtYard. On October 10, HUG, the new collaborative project of Devendra Banhart, Gyan Riley, and Noah Georgeson, brings an intimate and contemplative sound shaped by the three artists’ longstanding friendship and shared musical history. Fans can listen to HUG’s album before it releases at an Album Playback in ArtYard’s galleries and outdoor courtyard on September 10.
The fall residency program continues in a work-in-progress performance by Carolina Oliveros, a Colombian-born, Brooklyn-based artist developing a theatrical live presentation for her first solo studio album, Ya Rompimos el Silencio. Rooted in her Afro-Caribbean heritage and shaped by a musical path that includes formal opera training and performing in heavy metal bands in Colombia, the project, with a public showing on November 13, brings together music, performance, and storytelling.
Community Programs
ArtYard’s fall season also offers audiences free opportunities to participate, learn, make, and spend time together outside traditional performances and exhibitions.
The season kicks off with a birthday happy hour at FiNNBAR on Friday, September 4, ArtYard’s official 10th birthday. In October, artist Elsa Mora will lead two three-part Punching Bag Embroidery workshop series, inviting participants to contribute to a collaborative sculptural work exploring care, strength, vulnerability, and resilience to be installed as part of the upcoming 2027 exhibition Materfamilias. The fall season will also include a community film night featuring The Wizard of Oz on November 19, with special guests leading the costumed audience in a chorus of the 1939 classic. Community members are also invited to carve radishes in a workshop on Sunday, Dec. 20 that will be part of an epic holiday tableau inspired by the Night of the Radishes (Noche de Rábanos) in Oaxaca, Mexico.
In addition, ArtYard offers weekly Thursday Drawing Night series from Oct. 29 through Jan. 21; campus tours on the first Sunday of every month through November; and invites artists, neighbors, and audiences to connect with ArtYard staff in a relaxed setting at its new Happy Hours at FiNNBAR as part of Frenchtown’s First Fridays.
Admission to ArtYard’s exhibitions is free. ArtYard’s gallery hours are 11 AM to 7 PM on Thursdays and 11 AM to 5 PM on Fridays to Sundays.
More announcements are yet to come, including information about ArtYard Membership (on Sept. 2) and a new exhibition (on Sept. 9).
For more information, visit artyard.org or contact ArtYard at 908-996-5018. To purchase tickets or register for ArtYard programs, visit artyard.org/events. ArtYard’s Tin Anniversary Gala tickets start at $150 and are available at artyard.org/gala.
About ArtYard
ArtYard is an interdisciplinary contemporary arts center dedicated to presenting transformative artwork, fostering unexpected collaborations, and incubating original new work. Situated in the heart of Frenchtown, New Jersey, ArtYard encompasses exhibition spaces, a theater, artist residencies, and community programs designed to engage artists and audiences alike. Admission to gallery exhibitions is free, ensuring accessibility and openness as fundamental elements of ArtYard’s mission. ArtYard is a registered 501(c)(3) organization. Stay connected with us on Instagram by following @artyardcenter and learn more at artyard.org.
