NXTHVN Reveals Next Moves

The founders of NXTHVN intend the arts community under construction in New Haven’s Dixwell neighborhood to be so public-facing that its art gallery will literally be transparent.

NXTHVN Executive Director Nico Wheadon offered an update on the project during a conversation at the monthly meeting of New Haven government’s Cultural Affairs Commission.

Wheadon said that the new glass-walled gallery space between two former industrial buildings at 169 Henry St. represents the organization’s philosophy. She said she pushed project architect to remove the gallery’s front desk and the possibility of an obstacle in that initial transaction.

NXTHVN is rising on the site of a former factory at the corner of Henry and County streets. When completed, it is to feature ​“19 professional studio spaces, a shared co-working space, a black box theater, a world class art gallery and a locally-owned cafe.” (The project was designed by Deborah Berke Partners, the firm founded by Yale School of Architecture Dean Deborah Berke.)

“You can see art from the street. That’s a really important aspect of the design. We didn’t want to have a big steel gate,” Wheadon said at the meeting, held Monday evening at City Hall.

MacArthur ​“genius” award recipient Titus Kaphar founded NXTHVN with fellow Yale School of Art grad Jonathan Brand as a way to invite the talented artists who pass through New Haven to stay and to connect isolated circles of those already living here. The building is still under construction, with finishing touches expected to be complete at the end of this year.

Some of the studio spaces have been ready since last spring.

Wheadon said that she settled NXTHVN’s second class of fellows into the space on Monday. The fellowship program attracted 255 applications from professional and emerging artists. The nine chosen also serve as mentors to eight high school students this year.

Wheadon said that the construction budget is roughly $11 million from a mixture of funding sources, including some state and local dollars as well as private philanthropy.

The fellows receive stipends, and the high school students are paid $11 an hour for about five hours a week. Wheadon said that NXTHVN received around two dozen applications from high school students and hopes to continue to grow interest.

When members of the arts commission asked Wheadon whether NXTHVN’s funding sources will be sustainable long-term, she said that she is making sure the organization is diversifying its funding sources. She said that most of NXTHVN’s early supporters are collectors of Kaphar’s work and that she is thinking about who will donate when that moment passes.

Jazz musician and arts commission member Jesse Hameen II, who grew up in Dixwell and lives there now, asked Wheadon why NXTHVN is being built in that neighborhood.

Wheadon said that it is important to the organization to serve that community first, and then New Haven and the world. She said she wants to see a systemic impact, starting with supporting the artists of color often missing in the art world.

“The idea that culture has to be centralized within the city or that Yale gets to have a monopoly on what happens, it’s just not true,” Wheadon said. ​“Why not Dixwell?”

Hameen noted that when he was growing up in Dixwell, it was a center of art and music for the area.

​“That’s right. What was the name of the jazz club there?” Wheadon asked.

“What was the name of one of the jazz clubs,” Hameen corrected.

The Monterey Club is the most famous of the historic Dixwell music venues, with guests ranging from Billie Holiday to John Coltrane, but it was far from the only venue.

The majority of Wheadon’s visit with the commission involved members suggesting potential collaborations for NXTHVN and Wheadon welcoming the ideas.

Workforce development nonprofit ConnCAT is already tapped to run the cafe component of the project. One commission member suggested stocking the cafe with products by Dixwell and other local food entrepreneurs through a program run by Collab and CitySeed.

Other commission members asked about renting the performance or short-term residency space. Wheadon said that the theater is already rentable for private events as a ​“dusty concrete box” but that finishing touches will likely not occur until next winter.

She also encouraged local arts organizations to place guests in the residential space. The stay would be more affordable than a hotel, she said, and artists would be able to drop into a community that they would already be interested in.

Wheadon said that these collaborations are exactly what motivates her to work at NXTHVN, including over this holiday season. The former program director at the Studio Museum in Harlem, where she met Kaphar during his residency there, wants to help bridge historically Black and arts communities already present here.

Launching an artist-centered space like this is not something she could have done in New York City, she said.
​“Even just having space in your home – not having all your things and all your people all up on you – feels like you can actually do the work of building an institution,” she said.