Moments from Marina Abramović Institute

Marina Abramovic announced plans in 2007 for a permanent institute in Hudson, New York, dedicated to preserving and teaching long-durational performance art, "the Abramovic Method," a set of exercises in slowness, attention, and endurance that she'd developed across her own career. Rem Koolhaas's firm OMA designed an ambitious building for the project, and Abramovic raised over two million dollars through fundraising and a well-publicized Kickstarter campaign, but the permanent building was ultimately scrapped in 2017 after costs and complications outpaced what the project could realistically fund, leaving MAI without the physical home it was originally built around.

What survives is the institute as an idea and a program rather than a fixed address: MAI continues to run workshops, performances, and residencies teaching the Abramovic Method at venues around the world, often temporary or borrowed spaces rather than a single dedicated building. If you're looking to actually experience the Method, an MAI workshop typically involves genuinely unusual, sustained physical exercises, extended stillness, slow walking, sensory deprivation, rather than anything resembling a conventional gallery visit, so go in prepared for something closer to a durational retreat than an art opening.