Garrison Buxton, Ad Hoc co-owner, is deciding to scale back operations on 49 Bogart Street.

The future of Ad Hoc Art has been Bushwick’s worst-kept secret for months.  Ad Hoc Art will not present exhibits in its 49 Bogart Street space, its owners announced last week, and is now actively seeking collaborators to share costs for the operation of the space.

"We are out of available funds that we are willing to invest in an unsustainable environment," said Garrison Buxton, owner of Ad Hoc.  "We realized we can’t continue to go on in the same way.  We’re going to make decisions.  We can’t afford to string it out a month or two longer."

Let’s be clear here: Ad Hoc Art is not closing or dissolving.  The current show, featuring Chris Stain and Armsrock, represents the last show fully managed and supported by Ad Hoc Art.  Other exhibits and special events are in the works for the remainder of the year, and there are discussions for shows in 2010 that Buxton and his wife, Alison, are still finalizing.  They are searching for artistic groups who have had experience organizing gallery exhibitions to engage in some kind of financial arrangement for shows and share costs, until their lease ends in Summer 2010. 

"We have different people we’re talking with, to have it be a permanent thing," said Buxton. "We’re not interested in renting it out for a week.  We don’t want to be responsible for the entire overhead."

There have been rumblings from the Buxtons for over a year that their gallery’s business model was unsustainable.  Rent was climbing and the art, while still selling, was not making up enough of the overhead costs.  The first sign of trouble came in November last year, when they negotiated with their business partner, Ray Cross, who expressed a desire to leave the company.  Buxton and Cross said that this was a mutual decision and the two were moving in different artistic directions.  Cross is currently trying to set up a screenprinting shop in the Bushwick area, though Buxton has not ruled out future collaborations to share capital costs.

Two months later, Ad Hoc quietly let go of its dynamic front room curator, Andrew Michael Ford.  Ford had lured a number of influential street artists from around the globe, building Ad Hoc’s reputation as an international art destination (or at least worth making the trip over from Manhattan).  The crowds at openings grew too, as a diverse group of artists such as Judith Supine, Ron English, Lady Pink, Aiko, Imminent Disaster, Gaia, Chris Stain, BAST, Swoon, and Skewville regularly exhibited works at the show.  Skewville’s Ad Deville even opened his own gallery, Factory Fresh, down the street, and a cluster of galleries, restaurants, and coffee shops began coalescing around what BushwickBK quite accidentally dubbed "Morgantown."

With Ford’s absence, many artists and arts professionals in the neighborhood speculated on whether Ad Hoc could maintain its position as a Bushwick arts anchor and sustain energetic exhibits throughout the year.  Crowds still swelled on Friday nights, so much so that police from the 90th precinct camped outside, waiting to issue citations for open containers.  Despite their popularity, it appeared that the shows this year were becoming unfocused and adrift, though strong shows by Gaia and Imminent Disaster, Morning Breath, and a delightful collaboration at Fountain 2009 showed some promise.  More importantly, the art, with the exception of the Morning Breath show, wasn’t selling well.

"There are still people buying art, but they’re buying less and spending less," said Buxton.  "Having affordable original artwork is important and people still want to support artists."

Factory Fresh’s Ali Ha, whose gallery will likely pick up much of the audience and artists who had shown at Ad Hoc expressed sadness about the Buxtons’ decision.  It was Ad Hoc’s viability and the neighborhood’s developing street art scene that lured Ha and her partner, Ad Deville, to move their gallery from the Lower East Side to Flushing Avenue.

"We were friends with them before we came to the neighborhood.  They visited us when we were operating at Orchard Street," said Ha. "That was our introduction to the neighborhood and how we even knew about the area.  We really came to like it here because of them. For us, it’s a loss personally and for the neighborhood it’s going to be a bummer because they were the stronghold gallery here."

The future for the space and for Ad Hoc Art remains unclear.  The Buxtons want to keep their brand name, and are focusing on more traveling exhibitions, such as ones in Oklahoma and Vermont later this year, as well as more public art projects such as the Willoughby Windows exhibit in DUMBO.  They are also negotiating with arts groups, but were deliberately vague about the future of the front room, so as not to affect the negotiation process.  Buxton assures everyone that there will not be a restaurant, bar, or grocery store at 49 Bogart anytime soon.  He hopes that it will remain an art space of some kind, though he would not commit that Ad Hoc Art will be involved with it.

"Maybe people are looking at it in too tight parameters," said Buxton.  "Everything is a moment in time: days, weeks and years.  Everything has its beginning and end.  We should not be reluctant or ignore the fact that this is the case.  Change is inevitable."

This certainly runs counter to the institution-building that dance studio Chez Bushwick and its CAPITAL-B project are attempting, and the instability of gallery spaces could make this work more challenging in the coming months.

"Economic pressures have opened up opportunities for arts spaces to hybridize their programming and income streams in creative ways; setting up co-working, pop-up stores, and local partnerships with developers," said Adriana Young, CAPITAL-B Research Director.  "Through CAPITAL-B artists, arts organizations, and community groups all facilitate new alliances, open community meetings and events so that no one is alone in the struggle for funding and space."

Buxton is less romantic about the permanence of art spaces and whether Ad Hoc Art was ever really a neighborhood institution.

"In the history of New York, spaces have come and gone.  Our existence is ephemeral.  To be liberated from an unsustainable environment allows us to have greater effectiveness in a lot of other ways to take on new projects."