Project by Benjamin Garcia
The Museum of Arab American Performance illuminates histories and ongoing cultural expressions within the Arab American diaspora through a specific focus on the performing arts. The project proposes a vertical museum and performing arts center situated on the former site of the Little Syria colony in Lower Manhattan. The building, itself, performs through layered transparencies, suspended fragments, and framed views that recall stagecraft and scenography, while crafting a kinetic sense of cultural memory for both visitors and artists. Double-height museum galleries form adjacencies to contemporary modes of performance like dance, song, film, theatre, and oral storytelling. Sculptural circulation paths, salvaged building marquees, and decorative fragments from 20th-century works of Arab American theatre are all recontextualized as ‘set piece’ boundaries; selectively framing moments of visual continuity between spaces of archive and performance. Each level is encountered as a narrative threshold between different modes of visibility: rehearsal, exhibition, storytelling, and making.
