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Following her decision to abandon plans for an OMA-designed, upstate New York museum, artist Marina Abramovic has spoken out in response to allegations that her institute may have improperly utilized funds raised through a crowdsourced fundraising campaign.
The statement targets a recent article published by the New York Post, in which the authors claim Abramovic had failed to return the $661,452 she raised on Kickstarter after the project fell through.
“The Kickstarter was created to fund schematic designs by OMA New York for the building in Hudson, NY,” said Abramovic in a press release. “The bill we received from the firm for this specific design work was $655,167.10. We used the Kickstarter funds to pay OMA New York’s design fee.”
The release also contains a detailed account of the funds raised and spent on the project, which included nearly $1 million paid to OMA for design and other services. The list also reveals that OMA had contributed $142,167 worth of their own time to the project as a donation.
In the press release and in a recent interview with Vulture, Abramovic reveals that she had spent more than $1 million of her own money to support the project, but unforeseen circumstances, including $700,000 in asbestos abatement, ultimately rendering the project financially impossible.
Read Abramovic’s full statement, here.
Marina Abramovic Ends Plans for OMA-Designed Art Institute After $2.2 Million Fundraising Campaign
Performance artist Marina Abramovic has ended plans for her OMA-designed upstate New York art institute, leaving questions about what happened to the $2.2 million she raised from a slate of celebrity patrons and nearly 5,000 Kickstarter donors. When Abramovic first announced the project in 2012, she touted the plans as transformative for the town of Hudson, New York.
