Swizz Beatz Foundation in Fordham With Free Art Classes
Hip-hop producer Kasseem "Swizz Beatz" Dean and his wife, Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Alicia Keys, have unveiled plans for a new arts center in the sleepy upstate New York town of Macedon.
Swizz and Keys, who collect artists including Kehinde Wiley, Nina Chanel Abney, Arthur Jafa, KAWS, and Deana Lawson, take reportedly been looking for the right venue for their new Dean Collection Music & Art Campus for quite some time. But when they saw the former industrial complex on Macedon'south Road 31 they immediately knew it was the perfect place, according to the Democrat & Chronicle.
"[Swizz Beatz] flew in on a helicopter to Canandaigua near a month ago and took a limousine from Canandaigua to Macedon, got out, looked at the belongings and apparently said, 'This is it; this is the property I desire to buy,'" the couple's lawyer, Linda Shaw, told WXXI News. "It's an amazing use for the street, because that street was part of the Underground Railroad and their art drove is an African American art collection."
Beatz signed a contract to buy the state, and the deal is expected to close in the next two weeks. "We are very excited most our campus in Macedon," Swizz Beatz told artnet News, through a representative. "We are in the early stages of planning so we are not in a identify to share details, but our intention is to keep to be mindful in building a global creative community."
Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys accept signed a contract to buy the former Jindal Films industrial complex in Macedon, New York and plan to plough it into the Dean Drove Music & Art Campus. Photo courtesy of Pyramid Brokerage Company.
Located in Wayne County, less than a half hr'southward bulldoze from Rochester and 70 miles due west of Syracuse, Macedon has a population of just 8,985, co-ordinate to theFinger Lakes Times. When Shaw brought plans for the eye before town board members last week, there were audible gasps from the townspeople in attendance. "There was a wow factor," town engineer Scott Allen told local news outlet News10NBC. "That's the million-dollar question: Why Macedon?"
Although it might seem unlikely, the bargain is "shockingly real," Shaw told news station 13WHAM, and the couple volition be touring the property in the coming weeks. She will brand a second presentation to the town planning board on Baronial 19.
Plans for the potential Dean Collection Music & Art Campus site. Photo past Scott Allen, courtesy of the town of Macedon.
The Dean Collection hopes to gear up upward store in a 110-acre industrial complex built in the early on 1960s. Originally the Kordite Technical Center, the site served as the Exxon/Mobile Center before being sold to the Jindal Films Company, which is based in India. Just Jindal moved out in December 2015, and the property has been on the market since, with the asking price dropping from $6.iii 1000000 to $2.v meg, according to theTimes of Wayne Canton. (The property was assessed at $7.8 million in 2016.)
There are three vacant buildings on the property, collectively measuring 200,000 square feet. The Dean Collection's plans telephone call for renovating the primary building and converting it into classrooms, a cafeteria, and office space. The idea, according to the official project description, is to "brainwash musicians and artists most the business organization side of the music and art industry, and take a campus and artistic temper for learning and expanding opportunities."
"The long term use of the property, which will probable require rezoning portions of the 100-acre belongings to accommodate mixed uses, is to build dorms and a place for people to live while they are attending or education at the school," the proposal continues.
Swizz Beatz at No Commission: Art Performs in the Bronx. Courtesy of Angela Pham.
One of the other ii buildings will become a performing arts center with a training area and a gym, the other an exhibition space and the permanent home for the Dean Collection. The gallery space, housed in what is now a simple pole barn, volition have regular public viewing hours.
The move follows ii high-profile exhibitions of piece of work from the Dean Drove held earlier this year, at UTA Creative person Space in Los Angeles during Frieze Los Angeles and at the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art at the Hutchins Center at Harvard University. The former featured more than twenty contemporary African American artists, curated past Dean Collection art adviser Nicola Vassell, while the latter was a bear witness of works by Civil Rights-era photographer Gordon Parks. (Beatz and Keys boast the largest privately held collection of Parks's work.)
Nora Khan, Kimberly Drew, Swizz Beatz, Anne Pasternak, Virgil Abloh, and Carmen Aguilar y Wedge speak onstage every bit part of the "Time to come of Art" panel in Miami. Photo by John Parra/Getty Images for BACARDI.
The Dean Drove Music & Art Campus appears to exist a natural extension of the work that Swizz Beatz has washed with No Commission, the free fine art fair he founded in Miami in 2015 that gives artists 100 percent of all their sales proceeds. The event has since seen editions in the Bronx, London, Shanghai, and Berlin. In 2018, the Dean Drove took that work i step farther by giving out $100,000 to help artists looking to stage their ain exhibitions—$5,000 each to 20 dissimilar artists—through the Dean Drove xx St(Art)ups initiative.
The deal for the new art center is expected to motility quickly. "I recollect the Boondocks Board was very excited," Shaw told WXXI News. "We got a very positive reception."
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Source: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/swizz-beatz-alicia-keys-art-center-1623472
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