times, a new experimental arts nonprofit in downtown New York co-founded by Summer Guthery and Francesca Sonara, will open its doors on February 12, 2026. Across 3,000 square feet of exhibition space—including two galleries and a screening room—the organization provides sustained attention for artists’ ideas at a moment when opportunities for non-commercial experimentation are increasingly scarce. Artist-first and artist-forward, times gives artists the agency to determine how work is made, shown, and encountered, free from market pressures or expectations of salability.
times’s inaugural programming will feature a performance by Jana Jacuka (February 12) and a solo exhibition by Nina Beier (February 21–May 9) which will be activated by a series of performances by longtime collaborator Bob Kil; followed by subsequent projects with Nadia Belerique, Asad Raza, Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff, Liv Schulman and Gernot Wieland which expand through a narrative arc across the first year. times brings together an international and intergenerational cohort of artists who respond to social, political, economic, and ecological crises. Prioritizing work that unfolds through process, duration, and presence—treating time as both material and method—the organization’s exhibitions are conceived as part of a shared cultural memory rather than as isolated events, encouraging repeated visits and slower modes of engagement.
Co-founder Summer Guthery comments, “With a planned three-year obsolescence, we envision times as an intentionally small, agile non-profit within a trajectory of independent and artist-run spaces in New York, from Participant Inc. to Orchard. We will be present-focused, highlighting urgent artistic responses to these harrowing times. Our aim is to support artists in ways that allow them to realize ambitious projects not usually possible in larger institutions, and to emphasize community-building and experimental practices over commercial pressures.”
Co-founder Francesca Sonara says, “There's a misguided sense that scale and growth, above all, is what matters. We’re not trying to build a legacy institution. We’re interested in creating meaningful engagement now, not a self-perpetuating institution.”
The opening performance by Jana Jacuka (b. 1995, Latvia), entitled HA, explores the performativity of laughter as an escape mechanism. The artist grunts, screams, and speaks while inhaling, inviting the audience to engage with the visceral experience of extreme vocal practices. The inaugural exhibition by Nina Beier (b.1975, Denmark)—her first solo show in NYC in seven years—will occupy the entirety of the three gallery spaces with hundreds of off-brand Cornetto-style ice cream cones. Due to unnatural ingredients that ensure the ice cream retains a certain solidity, the Cornettos never fully melt, rather deflating like latex balloons. The confection seems caught in time, forever suspended between form and failure.
Guthery continues, “Nina’s work baits people into the gallery with an installation which is at once organic and artificial. As our inaugural exhibition, the work speaks to the experimental, time-based work we’re interested in platforming, and references the indigestibility of our current cultural moment.”
Sonara concludes, “times draws significant inspiration from the Dadaists, as well as the Surrealists and Fluxus artists, who were deeply rooted in community and sought to create spaces for immediate, intuitive, and sometimes absurd experimentation in confrontation with political and social turmoil—an approach that we aim to emulate. Absurdism can be a cudgel against the oppressive tactics of a fascist government, but also a comfort.”
About Summer Guthery
Summer Guthery is a curator, writer, and arts organizer based in New York City. She was Director of Canal Projects from 2022 to 2025, where she led the organization’s curatorial vision and programming. She is also the founder and director of JOAN, a nonprofit exhibition space in Los Angeles dedicated to emerging and underrepresented artists.
Guthery has organized exhibitions with artists including Pippa Garner, Candice Lin, Korakrit Arunanondchai, and Truong Cong Tung, among many others. She previously held curatorial roles at LAXART in Los Angeles and the Performa Biennial in New York, and served as curator-in-residence at Disjecta in Portland, Oregon. She holds an MA in Curatorial Studies from Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies. Guthery is a regular contributor to Frieze, and her writing has also appeared in Artforum, ArtReview, and Art in America.
About Francesca Sonara
Francesca Sonara is a curator, collector, and arts philanthropist based in New York City, invested in building innovative nonprofit arts platforms. Over the past 15 years, she has served as Director of Communications at Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco, advisor to a Private Collection in Northern California, and as a board member of JOAN in Los Angeles.
Sonara holds an MA in Curatorial Studies from Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies and has dedicated her practice to nurturing new models of arts spaces that support underrepresented artists. Her work emphasizes collaboration, audience engagement, and sustainable structures for experimentation, advancing a vision of arts organizations as dynamic, responsive, and community-rooted.
