The Garage
The Garage was an artist-run exhibition space in Jersey City directed by Margaret Murphy from 2005 to 2009. It hosted biannual exhibitions in a street-level garage and curated shows by invitation at NJCU Art Galleries, Flushing Town Hall in Queens, and the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey. Exhibitions at The Garage were reviewed or featured in ArtInfo.com, The New York Times, Hyperallergic, The Star-Ledger, Art F City, and The Jersey Journal.
The archives of The Garage are housed at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art. They include exhibition postcards, newspaper clippings and printed articles, exhibition photographs of artworks and installation photos, guest sign-in books, and a fragment of Lisa Dahl’s Park Place installation and Ellen Harvey’s digital prints from her New York Beautification Project.
The mission of The Garage was to bring gallery-quality artwork to the residential neighborhood of Jersey City Heights. For each exhibition, alongside a curated group show, founder Margaret invited an artist to treat the middle bay of a three-car garage as their canvas. These artists created site-specific installations on the garage doors using materials such as fabric, artificial grass, Monopoly houses, paint, vinyl, and even a motion-sensor dome that activated a bubble machine when pedestrians passed by.
The postcard announcements for exhibitions at The Garage always featured the garage itself on the cover, reinforcing the space as both subject and site. In addition to curating exhibitions in external venues, Margaret was invited to speak on several panels, including Curating as Social Sculpture: Being a Part of the Cultural Conversation Beyond the Studio Walls at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center, and Let’s Talk: Creating Community for a Sustainable Life in the Arts at the Southeastern College Art Conference, where she presented The Garage as a model for experimental exhibition-making and community engagement.
Located in a walkable, community-oriented neighborhood known for its mix of residential and commercial spaces, parks, restaurants, dollar stores, and skyline views of Manhattan, The Garage was warmly embraced by the local community. Margaret recalls cars honking, neighbors waving, and passersby expressing excitement as artists transformed the garage doors for each new installation.
Opening receptions were open to all and regularly drew enthusiastic crowds of both local residents and artists, fostering a vibrant and inclusive cultural exchange.