Alanna Heiss

Alanna Heiss
Alanna Heiss at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center opening on 22 February 2009
Born	(1943-05-13) May 13, 1943 (age 73) Louisville, Kentucky
Known for	Art International Radio, Clocktower Productions, alternative space movement, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center,

Alanna Heiss (born May 13, 1943, in Louisville, Kentucky) is the Founder and Director of Clocktower Productions, a non profit arts organization, online radio station, and program partnership with six cultural institutions in three boroughs in New York. She founded and was the Director of MoMA PS1 (formerly P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center) from 1976 to 2008 and is one of the originators of the alternative space movement. Heiss has curated and/or organized over 700 exhibitions at P.S.1 and elsewhere.

Heiss was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and raised in a farming community in Jacksonville, Illinois. The daughter of teachers, she graduated with a B.A. from Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, which she attended on a scholarship from the Lawrence Conservatory of Music.

In the early 1970s, Heiss became a leader of the Alternative Spaces Movement, which turned abandoned or under-utilized buildings in New York City into temporary centers for the production and presentation of contemporary art. These projects across the city were grouped under the umbrella organization The Institute for Art and Urban Resources., which operated as many as 11 spaces in the early to mid 1970's, including the Idea Warehouse, 10 Bleecker Street, and The Coney Island Factory. The Institute's first major project was the 1971 Under The Brooklyn Bridge event, which presented seminal projects by such artists as Carl Andre, Keith Sonnier, Gordon Matta-Clark, Jene Highstein, Sol Lewitt, Richard Nonas, and Dennis Oppenheim, among others.

In 1972, Heiss founded The Clocktower Gallery, an art space housed in the former New York Life Insurance Company Building, a landmarked McKim, Mead & White municipal building known as the Clocktower, in Lower Manhattan. Opening with inaugural shows by Joel Shapiro, Richard Tuttle, and James Bishop, the Clocktower presented seminal work in the visual arts, performance, and music by artists including Gordon Matta-Clark, Lynda Benglis, Max Neuhaus, Dennis Oppenheim, Richard Artschwager, Pat Steir, Vito Acconci, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Charlotte Moorman, Laurie Anderson, and Marina Abramović, among others. In 2013, the City of New York sold the Clocktower building to a private developer, and the organization relocated its operations through program partnerships with other arts institutions around the city, including Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Knockdown Center in Queens, and Times Square Arts, among others.