Every five years MoMA PS 1 goes native and puts up a monster show of art by mostly emerging artists who live and work in the metropolitan New York area. By definition a hodgepodge, this year's iteration has been condensed to a more concentrated view of art being produced during the last half decade. The opening celebration is this Sunday, May 23, from noon to 6:00 pm.

MoMA PS 1 in Long Island City, with Manhattan skyline in the background. Photo courtesy PS1.org

This year the selection committee has been trimmed down to a lean group of three: Klaus Biesenbach, Director of MoMA PS1 and Chief Curator at Large at The Museum of Modern Art; Connie Butler, The Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings, The Museum of Modern Art; and Neville Wakefield, MoMA PS1 Senior Curatorial Advisor.

They have selected the nearly 70 artists presented through studio visits, review of recommendations, mailed submissions, and through Studio Visit, a new initiative on www.MoMAPS1.org that invites artists to present their artwork and studios online. In an effort to make this year's installment representative of New York's diverse and mercurial art world, the curators have brought together a lively mix of emerging and mid-career artists.

Time based art, installation, and performance pieces are a natural for PS 1, which has a number of small spaces where a rotating schedule of site-specific installations and performances will be seen. Among them are the Delusional Downtown Divas (Joana Avillez, Lena Dunham, and Isabel Halley), who have produced a new episode of their ongoing video series, and Guido van der Werve, who will create an orchestra performance premiering at MoMA PS1 over the weekends of Oct. 2^nd and 9^th. Artists such as Ei Arakawa and robbinschilds will offer open studios to the general public and collaborations with a selected group of invited artists on numerous scheduled days.

Many of the artists in Greater New York have on view a group of representative works, as if each were mounting a small solo show. Others collaborated productively to create new and unique room installations that make use of MoMA PS1's varied, architecturally nuanced spaces. Leading up to the opening of Greater New York, artists including Franklin Evans, Dani Leventhal, and Kalup Linzy utilized MoMA PS1 as studio space to create new work on-site.

In addition to presenting works made within the past five years, Greater New York 2010 will also offer workshops and performance space where artists are invited to experiment with new ideas within MoMA PS1's building for the duration of the exhibition. In the Vault, a basement space that has been transformed into a theater, new film and video will be presented throughout the run of the show. In the Boiler Room, Aki Sasamoto has invited the artist Saul Melman to collaborate on a project in which they will gild the old, original boiler of the former public school.

Greater New York runs from May 23 to October 18, 2010 at MoMA PS 1. The opening celebration is Sunday, May 23, from noon to 6:00 pm. 22-25 Jackson Ave at the intersection of 46th Avenue, Long Island City, NY. 718-784-2084.

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