Australian Pavilion to anchor Art OMI’s expansion in upstate New York

Contemporary Australian and First Nations art will soon have a permanent home in the Hudson Valley in upstate New York. Art OMI Pavilions at Chatham, NY — a 190-acre site set to house several architect-designed pavilions showcasing individual artists and collectors — is the venue, a project of New York real estate developer, philanthropist and collector Francis Greenburger.

In an exclusive, Greenburger and Co-Executive Director of Art OMI Pavilions Natalie Diaz told Art Collector that the Australian pavilion will occupy a dramatic structure designed by architecture firm SO-IL, a Brooklyn/Amsterdam-based practice that has also worked on the Melbourne Arts District. Comprising five interconnected gallery spaces, the human-scaled building is designed to harness natural light and encourage deliberately contemplative looking in a sequential movement through the galleries. This is intended, as Greenburger and Diaz explain, to “counter the false urgency of our culture by encouraging viewers to pause and sit.” Images of the pavilion show it topped by an asymmetrical cluster of truncated cones made up of thousands of stacked wooden blocks, creating a latticework effect that allows a luminescent flow of light along with views of the distant Catskill Mountains. Diaz elaborated, “Driving up to the site you’ll have this peek of an other-worldly building on the landscape, which will be the first architectural experience visitors have. It will be a clear beacon on the site.”

Diaz elaborated, “Driving up to the site you’ll have this peek of an other-worldly building on the landscape, which will be the first architectural experience visitors have. It will be a clear beacon on the site.”

Greenburger has a longstanding interest in Australia and Australian art, as evidenced by the more than 60 Australian works in his collection. Dozens of Australian artists — among them Sam Leach, Emma Fielden, Tamara Dean and Alex Seton — have undertaken residencies at Greenburger’s Art OMI in Ghent, NY, a 120-acre sculpture and architecture park minutes from the Pavilion project site. Founded in 1992, Art OMI runs a range of residencies for different artistic disciplines along with public education programmes.

The Art OMI Pavilions initiative was announced in June 2023, accompanied by a New York State Council on the Arts grant of US$5 million. When fully completed, it will consist of 18 pavilions and a visitor centre. Phase One of the project comprises individual pavilions dedicated to sculptor Alice Aycock, husband-and-wife artists Rakuko Naito and Tadaaki Kuwayama, and New York-based collectors Susan and Michael Hort, and is scheduled to open in spring 2027.

Phase Two, currently in design and development, includes a Biennial Exhibition Pavilion intended for changing exhibitions, a pavilion dedicated to cross-disciplinary Black painter Torkwase Dyson — who co-designed the structure with Gluckman Tang Architects — and the Australian Pavilion. The Australian Pavilion is the first national pavilion in the project, and its announcement was made possible by an anonymous donor among Greenburger’s extensive network of expat Australians.

Read the full interview in the upcoming issue of Art Collector 118 (October – December 2026).

Images:
Francis Greenberger in his New York offices. Photo: Jason Mandella.

The Australian Pavillion, Art Omi (design impression). Courtesy: Art Omi Pavillions.