Apr
5
to Apr 6

April 5&6 OPEN STUDIOS - in partnership with NXTHVN and Yale School of Art

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Please Join us April 5 & 6 for Open Studios (12-5pm both days) and meet our Keyhole Workspace Artists in Residence!


For the second year we are thrilled to be partnering with NXTHVN and Yale School of Art for a weekend full of artistic insight! Getting to talk and see artists in their studios is a unique and exciting experience - for both the artists and the viewers- to learn more about process etc!

Besides these three locations, there is an additional special exhibition just around the block from us- 63 Audubon Street- featuring a group exhibition of local New Haven artists curated by Yale School of Art, ACES/ECA, Yale School of Management, Center for Inclusive Growth, CAW, Neighborhood Music School, Arts Council of Greater New Haven and us!!

https://newhavenopenstudios.org/

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Apr
10
7:00 PM19:00

Weird Music Night Returns to Ely Center for Contemporary Art

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Weird Music Night Returns to Ely Center for Contemporary Art
Thursday, April 10, 2025
7:00 PM
Ely Center for Contemporary Art, 51 Trumbull St, New Haven, CT
FREE and open to all!

“An audacious manifesto of chaos, care, and catharsis.”
— Cafeteria, January 15, 2025

“Weird, wacky, and wildly entertaining.”
— New Haven Independent, August 9, 2024

Weird Music Night returns to the Ely Center for Contemporary Art, offering an eclectic evening of experimental music, performance art, and unexpected happenings. Curated by artist and organizer John O’Donnell, the event provides a space for musicians to push beyond the boundaries of conventional venues while introducing visual art audiences to experimental soundscapes. Drawing inspiration from the diverse punk scenes of the 1980s and the mythology of Japanese noise music, Weird Music Night embraces a radical, genre-defying approach to performance.

An Evening of Sonic Experimentation and Visual Synthesis Join us for an electrifying night of audiovisual exploration featuring Andrei Jay and Skull Tower 4E, two groundbreaking projects at the forefront of experimental sound and image.

Andrei Jay, a visionary artist, engineer, and educator, will present interactive video synthesizers inviting participants to engage directly with live, evolving visuals. With a background in mathematics and a passion for creative coding and analog video synthesis, Andrei creates systems that transform code into color, glitches into gestures, and signal into sensation. Their work offers a rare opportunity to play inside the circuitry of visual art.

Closing the night, Skull Tower 4E—the collaborative sound project of visual artists John O’Donnell and Peter Fulop—will deliver a live performance of spontaneous sonic composition. Responding to the imagery of silent film, Skull Tower 4E constructs immersive soundscapes using violin, guitar, circuit-bent toys, and analog tape loops. Their glitch-populated audio environments shift between melody and texture, inviting the audience into a space where experimental sound meets the ghostly flicker of early cinema.

This event celebrates the intersection of technology, improvisation, and art—where visual code becomes music, and noise becomes narrative.

ALSO: The New Haven, CT musician who goes by “Funkbucket will be playing a set. In a recent interview he said, “I am always delighted to play music.” So let’s see what that is all about! How Delightful.

ALSO: There will be a listening party for Pervertert Savant’s new album “Pretentious Detention,” not to be missed!

About Weird Music Night:
Each event features a diverse lineup of artists, from avant-garde musicians and experimental noise acts to theatrical performers and multimedia creators. Expect the unexpected in an evening where sound, performance, and visual art collide.

For press inquiries, interviews, or further information, please contact:

John O’Donnell |. weirdmusicnight@gmail.com | @weirdmusicnight

Join us for an evening of boundary-pushing performance and experimental sound!

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Apr
12
to Apr 13

The Museum of Babel

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The Museum of Babel

Performance by Shyamar Iyer & Alyssa Chetrick in collaboration with Juliana Morales Carreno
April 12 & 13, 8 pm
Free and Open to all

“When it was announced that the Library contained all books, the first reaction was unbounded joy. All men felt themselves the possessors of an intact and secret treasure.”- Jorge Louis Borges


Jorge Luis Borges’ Library of Babel envisions an infinite repository of all possible books, where lone inquisitors (librarians) wander hexagonal chambers, searching for meaning in an ocean of words and orthographic symbols. In their futile quest for order, and overwhelmed by the endless permutations of knowledge, they descend into madness—“confound and confuse all things, like some mad and hallucinating deity.”

The Museum of Babel is a reimagining of Borges’ labyrinthine vision, where the Ely Center of Contemporary Art transforms into his library. Narrator and movement artist Shayama Iyer and violinist Alyssa Chetrick become the inquisitors—figures in an endless, circular journey toward an unattainable truth.

The performance draws a parallel between Borges’ library and the digital abyss of the internet: an infinite archive where knowledge, misinformation, and surveillance intertsect. The lone librarian mirrors the modern researcher, navigating a vast and shifting epistemological landscape, often under the watchful eye of unseen forces.

As institutions of science and evidence-based knowledge are increasingly defunded, the very foundations of dialectical growth and objective truth stand at risk. Without the scaffolding of peer-reviewed research, freedom of language, and rigorous inquiry, we risk becoming lost in an endless hall of mirrors, unable to distinguish insight from noise. 

Through movement and sound, The Museum of Babel explores the struggle to find clarity in an overwhelming and fragmented reality—where the search for meaning is a Sisyphean act. Meaning is not found in solitude but rather from collective dialogue. By resisting the forces that seek to surpress the spaces of dialect, we find our way through the library—not alone, but with each other.

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Apr
13
2:30 PM14:30

Artist Talk & Reception for Amartya De

Please join us for the reception on Sunday, April 13, 2:30-4:30pm, to see the completed installation followed by a discussion guided by photographer Elle Perez at 4:30pm.

Maidan & XX, a two part solo exhibition of photographer Amartya De. 

On March 9th, viewers are able to begin their investigation into the photographic installation in its starting point with only a handful of photos on view. Over the weeks leading up to April 13th, De will be printing negatives in the Ely Center Basement Darkroom that he spent the previous year creating as well as making archival digital prints. Viewers will get a glimpse into De’s process which has grown out of his years growing up in Kolkata and the time he has spent travelling across the United States. Highlighted in Maidan & XX is a juxtaposition of time and space so viewers have a longer spectral dimension that holds their time - forcing them to be in the moment and retrospective simultaneously.

The photographs in this exhibition were mostly taken in 2023 but the film was only processed in February of 2025. “This latency became an inevitable part of my practice over time as I learnt the capabilities of the medium and the underlying subject matter and its relationships with formal compositional strategies, capacity, and the theme of national identity, borders, friendships and alienation.”

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Apr
26
5:00 PM17:00

10th Anniversary Benefit Gala and Art Auction

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 The Ely Center of Contemporary Art is turning 10!!

The Ely Center is 10!

Help us celebrate with the 10th Anniversary Benefit Gala

April 26th, 5-8pm @ CitySeed 162 James Street, New Haven, CT

We're celebrating by hosting our first Gala Benefit on April 26! Please join us for a live art auction, hosted by Guy Bennett and a silent Auction of selected and donated works. Bid on works by local artists while enjoying drinks and hors d'oeuvres, live music, a photo-booth, in CitySeed's new location.

Put on your festive, sparkling, and metallic attire and come celebrate with us!

Each ticket includes the After Party from 8-10pm.

Highlight from the Live Auction selections will include works by Anni Albers, Josef Albers, Ken Grimes, Roberto Lugo, Mario Moore, Mark Mulroney, Clara Nartey, Kim Weston and a Philadelphia Cultural Getaway weekend (curator led private tours, studio visits) with accommodations. 

Live Auction will begin promptly at 7pm.

Silent Auction features works by Faustin Adeniran, Scott Azevedo, Hayne Bayless, Joan Fitzsimmons, Brian Kaspr, Adam Niklewicz and MANY MORE!

Events will include a live Steel Band, aluminum origami demo Workshop with Sok Song, and a Photo-booth from Statement Sets with a rack of festive metallic wears.

Gala Tickets before April 1 is $85, after April 1 $125. ($35 of the Early bird price ticket is tax deductible and $75 of the full price ticket is tax deductible.)

Purchase tickets here.

Young Artist Ticket price $50 ( 35 and younger), after April 1 $85. Includes the After Party. $35 of the Early bird price ticket is tax deductible and $75 of the full price ticket is tax deductible.)

Purchase tickets here.

AFTER PARTY: Come join us for the Gala Benefit After Party!!!! Tickets are $25 in advance, $30 at the door. 8-10pm The celebration will continue with dancing, dessert and drinks. Festive metallic and dazzling attire encourage. Hosted by John O'Donnell artist/professor and founder of Weird Music Night!

Purchase tickets here.

Gala Committee : Helen Kauder, Emily Weiskopf, Aimée Burg, Deborah Hesse, Anna Bresnick, Annie Stutzman, Paul Clabby, Tamiko Collier, Colleen Coleman.

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