Gochman Collection of Indigenous Art to Open Katonah Space in November
The new home in New York, known as Branchline, will display selections from the family’s trove of over 800 contemporary Native artworks.
Branchline, a permanent exhibition space for the Gochman Family Collection, will open on November 6 in Katonah, New York, functioning as a new home for the renowned trove of contemporary Native art.
Building on the private collection's focus on Indigenous and anti-colonial art, Branchline will present rotating exhibitions of the over 800 works by contemporary Native artists in the Gochman Collection and provide residential and studio spaces for artists. Deriving its name from the network of rail lines that connect Katonah to surrounding areas like Manhattan and Upstate New York, Branchline also encompasses the ancestral and historical lineages informing the featured art.
"We imagine this as a flexible space to not only more broadly share the Collection, but to also create opportunities for varied audiences of artists, scholars, students, families, and our neighbors to spend time together," Laura Phipps, who became the collection's director in March, told Hyperallergic.
Designed by Elizabeth Roberts Architects and planted right next to the Katonah Metro-North station, the new site spans two historic buildings and a reconstructed barn. Open to the public four days a week and free of charge, Branchline's main gallery and annex will open next month, while its barn and sculpture deck will open in 2027. There are also two residential apartments above the main gallery for invited artists, and studio spaces to facilitate works in progress.
To set the tone for the site's communal vision, Branchline's inaugural exhibition, Line Break, curated by assistant curator Moonoka Begay (Ndee/Diné) with collection associate Nicole van Brugge, welcomes 18 artists from a range of practices and backgrounds. Intricate kené designs made by Sara Flores (Shipibo-Konibo), poetic paintings by Teresa Baker (Mandan/Hidatsa), and multimedia pieces by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (an enrolled Salish member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation) are among the over two dozen works.
"As we considered how lines have been used to map land, chart time, and index lineage, we recognized a natural connection to the ongoing dialogues present in contemporary Indigenous art," Begay told Hyperallergic. "Line Break presents a selection of work that speaks to the many properties of lines and considers what happens when they divide, extend, bend, and even break."
