That Was “Rockaway!”

By Dan Guarino

Well, we had built it. But would they come?

Ten years ago, early Sunday afternoon, June 29, 2014, all of us who worked so hard planning and launching this exhibition “Rockaway!” stood in a quiet Fort Tilden, thinking, “Now what?”

 “Rockaway!” was always more than “just” an art exhibition. With its origins in Hurricane Sandy, it was organized by Museum of Modern Art curator/MoMA PS1 director Klaus Biesenbach, would span five buildings, bring an impressive roster of partners, include three international artists, add the Honolulu Bienneial and 78 local and national artists at the Rockaway Beach Surf Club, present hundreds of artworks, some created exclusively for us, others previously at places like the Cloisters, and host big events all through that summer.

It all started at a Rockaway Beach Surf Club backyard table. Four of us from the Rockaway Artists Alliance sat to meet with Biesenbach. Just a casual chat, mind you. It was less than a year since Hurricane Sandy came smashing through, tossing all our communities and lives up in the air.

Present were RAA’s Marina Callaghan, Sophia Skeans, John Simonelli, and myself. I had taken up the reins as RAA President after the storm. We, too, were without a home, our two damaged Fort Tilden galleries and education building closed off to us for a good part of a year as National Parks surveyed for area damage and safety.

RAA could honestly have ceased to exist after Sandy. Just faded away. But with every crisis comes an opportunity, a “blank canvas” on which to start again.  Myself and others grabbed this chance to rejuvenate and rebuild. To toss out what didn’t work, reboot what did, fix what did but had problems, and grow all new programs across all the arts.

“RAA in exile” made great use of the MoMA PS1 VW Dome, built in Beach 94-95th Streets’ parking lot. With all the places Rockawayites could gather damaged by Sandy, Biesenbach worked mightily to bring this huge structure in where we could all be together. Any group could sign up and use the space for meetings, classes, dances, music, civics, exhibitions, anything.

It became our base to do music, writers group performances, psychological health talks, artmaking, healing through art, kids programs and more, and solidly be of service to our communities. We became the go-to group, providing programming of all kinds, sometimes within a few days’ notice.

We also got to know Biesenbach, his team, and his great love for Rockaway. Now, planning for the future, we thought let’s meet, see if he’d like to perhaps do, well, something with us.

He said he had “some ideas.” When we met again, he laid out “Rockaway!” Bigger than anything we had ever seen, ever done, it was what the New York Times would headline “Finally, A Tide of Celebration in Rockaway.” The idea, Biesenbach said, was to bring positive, world-spanning attention to our peninsula and its resilient spirit.

Before long, the idea began to build towards massive reality. Now RAA, as its hosts, was sitting in on its planning, and across from new partners, like Patti Smith, MoMA, the National Park Service, the Bloomberg Foundation, the Central Park Conservancy and then-fledgling Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy, NYC Parks, the Rockaway Beach Surf Club, Honolulu Biennial, Rockefeller Foundation, the Secunda Family and Moore Charitable Foundations, National Grid, and others. We would continue to work with them to bring new projects and funding long after.

At RAA, members like John and Esther Grillo, Renee Radenberg, staff like Christine Mullaly and Regina Moerdyk, and many others would join the project.

And what a project it turned out to be. Witnessing the destruction of Sandy from her own Rockaway home and all it washed away, artist/musician/author Patti Smith, who we had quite a few meetings with, created “Resilience of the Dreamer” amid the debris of the long-abandoned T9 building in Fort Tilden. A magnificent flowing curtain drifting in sunlight down from the ceiling, surrounding a gilded crisp white bed, meant to physically weather the elements, but still survive, retaining its integrity and beauty. She would also fill our T7 gallery with hundreds of her photos and T6 with an homage to Walt Whitman.

I personally signed for use of T9 and the Chapel, both long closed to the public but opened for us, and every single loaned artwork. It was a lot of signing!

Canada’s Janet Cardiff would bring the “Forty Part Motet,” an incredible sound sculpture loaned by MoMA. Within the Fort’s empty Chapel were arrayed 40 standing speakers out of which poured each voice of a 40-piece choir. Standing within its circle, the swelling sound of its sacred 16th century choral could transport you to another world.

Inspired by his native Argentinian hornero birds, artist Adrian Villar Rojas sculpted dozens of clay versions of their resilient nests. Placed indoors and out all over the Fort, some survived long after.

Food trucks were lined up, demonstrations by the Rockaway Little League and Rockaway Theatre Company, RAA’s park partners, and scores of volunteers were ready. A summer full of events was planned, starting with a performance by Patti Smith, with daughter Jese Paris Smith, guitarist Lenny Kaye, R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe and, straight from Broadway, actor James Franco.

But would they come? An early report called it a flop. But….

…yes, finally 5,000 people came to celebrate “Rockaway!” Plus thousands more over the summer!

A year and a half after a hurricane, less than a year after getting our galleries back, RAA and our honorable partners had hit it out of the park!! It was one of the biggest things ever to hit Rockaway, certainly the biggest art event, with worldwide coverage to boot.

The next year, RAA signed an unprecedented 10-year NPS “lease” for use of our buildings, which expires June 2025. We partnered with MoMA and others on many projects. In 2016, we even launched our own “Rockaway Summer ArtWave,” spreading art across the peninsula, with 10 local businesses, three galleries and two performance groups.

Looking back, I guess you could say, collectively, we did all right!

Photos by Victoria Barber.