It’s a unique space to have an art exhibition: a basement tunnel inside Sculpture Center, which is located inside a Long Island City building that once served as a trolley repair factory. 

“You have the arches, you have all of these pipes, you have all of these things that might pose difficulties how art work might be in a space,” Camila Palomino, a Queens native and Curatorial Fellow at Sculpture Center, said.

What You Need To Know

  • Sculpture Center is located in Long Island City

  • The contemporary art museum was founded in 1928

  • It’s located inside an old trolley repair shop building

  • The unique space includes a basement that features a tunnel for exhibition space

It’s a contemporary art museum founded in 1928. She was charged with choosing from over 800 artists' proposals for the center’s open call program, called In Practice, which supports emerging artists and curators. Eleven have their creations on display here as part of the show Literally Means Collapse.

“A lot of the projects are sort of like asking how do we deal with the fact that things are always breaking down around us,” Palomino said.

The diverse work ranges from an immersive installation which makes a statement on capitalism and religion using a walk-in booth that blows money. There is a collection of watches intertwined with excerpts from an archive about CIA intervention in Latin America, and a collection of water samples from all over the city and beyond.

“All of these samples have these different histories that we can understand about how the city was built and how the city has been redeveloping and going through these different cycles of change,” Palomino said.

There are traditional sculptures and not so traditional, the projects developed specific to the space offered at Sculpture Center.

“They fit really well in the location and that’s sort of the focus of these artists,” Palomino said.

This will be on display at Sculpture Center through Aug. 1.