In 2023, Angelina Jolie started Atelier Jolie. She signed an eight-year lease on Jean-Michel Basquiat’s old workspace/living space, and she dreamed of transforming the building into a half-business/half-charity which would provide resources and attention for refugee designers and creators. Originally, the idea was based on fashion – as in, bring in refugee creatives to design eco-conscious clothing lines and capsule collections. They did that for more than a year, but it looks like that idea has been partially abandoned. Now the building is partly devoted to a cafe (Eat Offbeat) and a more freewheeling arts-and-advocacy space in which important discussions are facilitated, lectures are given and also, Angelina is now providing gallery space for artists? From Jolie’s interview/profile in the NY Times this week:
The original vision for Atelier Jolie: For a little over a year, she has endeavored to build Atelier Jolie into a hub for artists and makers — and chefs, students and Broadway stars. The building comes with an almost unparalleled artistic pedigree: 57 Great Jones Street was once owned by Andy Warhol, and inhabited by Jean-Michel Basquiat, who had his studio there until his death in 1988. Jolie’s dream was for the space to once again be a cultural locus, a clubhouse full of inspired and international creatives, and also a magnet for a curious public — to come and browse, take a class, refuel with a slice of orange almond cake at the global-cuisine cafe, Eat Offbeat. It did not immediately work out as she envisioned. “It’s been tricky,” she said in a recent interview. “I found that this has been a lot of what not to do.”
Atelier Jolie is no longer about fashion: Its initial incarnation was as a pop-up fashion studio for visiting designers, “because I think the world’s most interested in that,” she said. “People focus on fashion. But, it was very quickly clear to me that that wasn’t going to be my love,” in part because she rejected the environmental impact of the typical fashion cycle — water pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, landfill-fueling consumption. “I don’t want to tell people that they need to buy something new every few months.”
Now she’s giving away space to artists for free: So she pivoted, expanding her web and sharing the rarest New York commodity: square footage. For free. The French multimedia artist Prune Nourry, who helped organize the Neshat event as part of an exhibition called “Strand for Women,” has become the atelier’s artist-in-residence, with a second-floor studio where she expects to sculpt sometimes mammoth works over the next two years.
Angelina is a connector: In her circles, she is known as a connector, who is quick to open her home, offer help and learn one-on-one; she has painted, danced and attended silk-screening, felting and cooking classes at Atelier Jolie. “I wanted a place where I could spend time with local artists,” she said. She hoped to conjure the vibe of a film set, she said, especially one with a crew from the far-flung corners of the world: “You can feel that feeling of being purposeful with others.”
How Atelier Jolie is classified: Atelier Jolie, a for-profit public benefit corporation (a certified B Corp) with the goal of social good, is not charging Invisible Dog any rent for its yearlong residency. In Brooklyn, the gallery needed $500,000 annually “just to open the door,” Zayan said, and regularly held fund-raisers. Now donations can support work directly. “We’re doing well, and we’re building a new model,” Jolie said of the financial prospects of Atelier Jolie, which has an eight-year lease on the building. Zayan aims to make it a destination for downtown and beyond, just as Invisible Dog was in the Boerum Hill section of Brooklyn. And Jolie has been an eager partner. They communicate almost daily, he said. “When you email her, you never know where she is, what time zone, but she answers you immediately. She’s very involved.”
How she came to Basquiat’s old building: Jolie loved the squat, sprayed-up building (which had recently housed a restaurant) when she first saw it in 2023 with one of her daughters. “I wasn’t interested in being on the Upper East Side,” she said, explaining why she sought out the downtown neighborhoods she had wound through in her 20s, while studying film at New York University. But, she said, “I was also intimidated by the history.” She got in touch with Basquiat’s sisters, who gave the atelier their blessing, and turn up at events. In conversations this month, Jolie seemed frustrated that the atelier was viewed as another exclusive downtown boutique. “The act of creation should be accessible to everyone,” she said.
Where she stays when she’s in NYC: She was speaking from a Manhattan hotel room; the New York apartment she bought in her 20s is now inhabited by one of her sons, and is a crash pad for his five siblings. Mom is welcome — sometimes. “The other day I said I was going to pop by, and he was like, can you just give me a day to clean?” she said. “I thought, I appreciate that, you should clean up for your mother. But also, how bad is it?”
“…A for-profit public benefit corporation (a certified B Corp)” – ah, well that sort of explains why it feels like Angelina is not interested in turning this into any kind of profit-generating anything. She came up with the concept of Atelier Jolie shortly after she finally sold her half of Chateau Miraval. As in, she found herself with $60 million and it was burning a hole in her pocket, so she put this together. That’s what it feels like too, that Angelina is just paying for everything and running the space as a not-for-profit art charity. It’s a shame too – while I love that she’s doing this, I also wish Gen Xer Jolie would participate in “hustle culture” a little bit, and just find a way to turn this into a revenue-generator. Sell Atelier Jolie merch, bring in creatives to make cool t-shirts which can be sold in the gift shop, SOMETHING. It’s giving “rich woman becomes a patron to the arts” but Jolie thinks she’s reinventing the wheel.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.
