ArtSeen
More Cooperatives
As members of one of the oldest food coops in the United States, we call for more cooperatives. The Park Slope Food Coop was founded in 1973 at the same moment as many alternative art spaces. It was formed by a small group of neighbors who wanted to make healthy, affordable food available to everyone. Like alternative art spaces, it relied on the efforts and ingenuity of its members. Now, with over 16,000 members, it is a well-established institution.
How does it work? Members work once every four weeks. In exchange, they get 20 to 40 percent savings on groceries purchased at P.S.F.C. As a “work-only” coop, only members in good standing may shop there, but membership is open to all. More important, members can participate in the decision-making process about what is bought, sold, and how to run the Coop. Where does your food come from? How much does it cost? How can you participate in the purchase and distribution of food in your neighborhood? A recent and well-publicized debate concerned a potential Coop boycott of products from Israel, which was reported in thousands of newspapers worldwide. But the Coop also provides education about food and health, and free daycare for members while they are shopping or working.
The Coop carries some of the freshest and most affordable food in the city—much of it organic and local—which is why, despite busy lives as teachers, writers, parents, social workers, artists, massage therapists, students, and those of us working in other vocations are members of the Coop. There’s more, though. Standing around three steel tables in our aprons, bandanas, and plastic gloves, cutting and wrapping cheese, bagging olives, dried fruit, nuts, spices, and tea, we discuss everything from politics to parenting—and argue about what music to play. The Coop is a community, and our squad is a micro-community within that.
The P.S.F.C. is a robust and functioning organization, a model of the well-run coop that has been studied and replicated around the world. And so we call for cooperatives as a model for the economy and for everyday living: cooperatives for daycare, education, banking, and farming. And we wonder, since the Coop was founded at the same time as venues like Artists Space, White Columns, P.S. 1, and A.I.R. (the first artist-run gallery for women in the United States), what would cooperative museums look like?
Contributor
Members of the Park Slope Food Coop, Food Processing Committee, C Week Monday Afternoon Squad
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES

Erik Olson: Through the States
By Hearne PardeeJUL-AUG 2020 | ArtSeen
The 20 hand-colored etchings of Erik Olsons Through the States, an online exhibition hosted by Luis de Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles, document a motorcycle trip, but as the virtual gallery interweaves text and images, they assume the guise of an animated scrapbook or graphic novel.

JULIA “JUJU” NIETO & RISHI MUTALIK with Jose Solís
FEB 2021 | Theater
Speaking with two members of his BIPOC Critics Lab, a new initiative hosted at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts that uplifts voices long left out of arts criticism, theater critic Jose Solís looks backwards on the culture that has silenced too many writers, and forwards toward a more inclusive paradigm.
Retreat from the Divided States of America
By Ivan TalijancicFEB 2021 | Dance
After a year of artistic stasis and isolation, Ivan Talijancic notices a trend of new international residencies dreamed up by New York artists. With tentative light at the end of the pandemics tunnel, and a bleak political reality in America, three choreographers look to a hopeful future on foreign shores.
38. (Williamsburg, Pier 88)
By Raphael RubinsteinFEB 2021 | The Miraculous
In July 1937, the government declares that all artists employed by the Works Progress Administration must be citizens of the United States. Among the people who are thus disqualified from receiving aid are two young painters, one from Russia, the other from Holland.