For the past four years Tinworks Art in Bozeman has been showcasing art in non-traditional spaces — like a metalworking warehouse, an old grain mill, and a dirt lot.
The nonprofit’s new leader wants to expand the possibilities for contemporary art in the region.
Jenny Moore joined Tinworks Art as founding director this month and says the organization seeks to create inclusive, immersive experiences that you won’t find in a traditional art gallery.
“How do you engage the land, how do you engage the space, how do you engage the neighborhood?” she said.
While Moore spent her formative early career years working in the New York City art world, she most recently spent about a decade working for the Chinati Foundation, a museum founded by artist Donald Judd in the west Texas desert.
Moore says she’s always been drawn to art in unconventional places.
“There’s a spirit of Bozeman in terms of kind of a new frontier, a new American West. It has its own interesting history," she said. "But as it’s developing for a place where people are looking for space, but also connection to the natural world, but also this interesting mix of a quasi-urban environment.
“You’ve got an epic Main Street that looks like old western characterizations, but you’ve got a dynamic energy and so many people moving here, which can lead to its own challenges and opportunities.”
Moore says art can give us experiences to help navigate the complexities and sometimes conflict that come with the kind of rapid change Bozeman is going through.
“Change is inevitable, of course, but artists are often at the very forefront of new ideas and dynamics and society, and I look to them to pose questions and sometimes we can find the answers there,” she said.
As Tinworks Art's new founding director, Moore is looking to expand programming from being seasonal to year-around.
A multimedia art show called Invisible Prairie opens at Tinworks Art’s warehouse in northeast Bozeman in July.
