New York’s Dream House Launches GoFundMe Campaign to Pay Back Rent

Dream House, an immersive installation space located in lower Manhattan, has launched a GoFundMe campaign with the goal of raising $150,000 owed in back rent. The campaign to save Dream House is being led by resident artists La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, as well as the MELA Foundation and its director Jung Hee Choi, as ARTnews points out. Read their full report here.

In addition to being the longstanding home to endless sound installations, Dream House also acts as Young and Zazeela’s residence and archive storage space. “Although hundreds of people are visiting and enjoying the Dream House every week, the expenses for our endeavors are still beyond our capabilities alone,” Jung Hee Choi wrote on Dream House’s GoFundMe page. Choi continued:

Our financial situation has become so serious that we must ask you to help us keep the Dream House alive.

The last couple of years brought severe difficulties, and now with the crisis caused by the pandemic, we are financially destitute. Despite the success of our Dream House, we unfortunately now find ourselves in a situation where we owe over $150,000 in back rent. Our financial needs have become overwhelmingly desperate. We have reached a critical point and we cannot continue without paying rent to the landlord; and yet, there is no way we can move out of this building. All of our work, history and future are here. We must cry out to the world to help us.

Read about La Monte Young’s 1987 album The Well-Tuned Piano in Pitchfork’s list “The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s.”