Photo Midge Wattles.
The Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation has announced plans to renovate the former home and studio of Abstract Expressionist painter Milton Resnick (1917-2004) at 87 Eldridge Street on New York’s Lower East Side. Having previously been a tenement, a synagogue and a church before passing into Resnick’s hands in 1977, the 114-year-old building is expected to reopen in 2016. Designed by the New York firm Ryall Porter Sheridan Architects, the renovated structure will house public exhibition spaces and the foundation’s offices. In addition to rotating exhibitions, the foundation will host lectures, poetry readings and other public events; there are also plans to establish a grants program for late-career painters and poets.
The foundation’s main mission is to exhibit, preserve and publish the works of Resnick and Pat Passlof (1928-2011), who were married for some five decades, as well as other painters of their generation. The foundation was established last year in order to fulfill Passlof’s will; as foundation trustee Nathan Kernan told A.i.A. in a phone conversation, “what Passlof felt most strongly about was that Milton Resnick’s work had not been appreciated to the degree it should be.”
