After only four years on the edge of SoHo and Tribeca, Canal Projects will be closing its physical location and transitioning into a grantmaking model starting next spring, the contemporary arts nonprofit announced today, October 22. Established by the Korean American community-oriented YS Kim Foundation, Canal Projects supports local and international artists in emergent and established phases of their careers.
Canal Projects opened its doors at 351 Canal Street, a 19th-century cast-iron building with a historic façade, in September 2022, presenting Pray, an exhibition of video works by Thai filmmaker and artist Korakrit Arunanondchai and NYC-based artist and director Alex Gvojic. The nonprofit has since hosted and supported myriad talks, exhibitions, screenings, performances, reading groups, workshops, and other related events onsite, recently including presentations of artists Sin Wai Kin, Karimah Ashadu, and Geumhyung Jeong.
According to a press statement shared with Hyperallergic, Canal Projects will commit approximately $3 million in funding for upcoming artist projects over three years beginning in May 2026, including financial support for Korean artist Ayoung Kim’s forthcoming exhibition at MoMA PS1.
“This new model will enable the non-profit organization to channel resources globally and expand its impact beyond New York City,” Canal Projects said in the statement.
Exhibition views of Charlie Perez-Tlatenchi: “Triumphant Currents, Auspicious Winds” (2025) during daytime and night time (Left photo by Matthew Li and Caroline Taylor Shehan, right photo by Izzy Leung; images courtesy the artist, Canal Projects, and ISCP)
This closure announcement joins the spate of gallery shutterings and model transitions sweeping from New York to California over the last two or so years as mounting evidence points to a downturn in the global art market.
A spokesperson for Canal Projects told Artnews that “the costs of maintaining a building with complex and outdated infrastructure was an important factor in the decision to close the space,” and that the gallery itself “was not functioning in the way that Canal Projects needed it to in order to accommodate their programming.”
This news comes midway through Sunset Park-native Charlie Perez-Tlatenchi’s solo exhibition Triumphant Currents, Auspicious Winds (2025), featuring an 11-panel mural affixed to Canal Projects’s windows and a three-channel video examining the Brooklyn neighborhood’s Mexican and Chinese influences. The show, on view through November 22, traces the colonial and imperial histories of both cultures through varying source materials.
Canal Projects will close out with an extended solo exhibition of work by Jakkai Siributr, a Bangkok-based contemporary textile artist addressing personal and regional histories through quilts, tapestries, embroidery, and installations.
