In Brooklyn, Powerhouse Arts Hosts the 2025 Artists Celebration, Fête of the Fates

As twilight fell over Brooklyn’s Gowanus waterfront on October 9, artists, patrons, and cultural innovators converged on the industrial sanctum of Powerhouse Arts for the organization’s most anticipated event of the year—the 2025 Artists Celebration: Fête of the Fates. The gala’s name is a play on words, combining a celebration or festive “fête,” with “fates,” referring to the night’s journey-like theme and mythological inspirations. 

The evening, a dazzling and transformative exploration of artistic destiny, marked Powerhouse’s second annual benefit and served as its foremost fundraising event to support and celebrate creative expression and raise funds for this new organization. Powerhouse is a 170,000-square-foot industrial structure that in the 1950s was a decommissioned transit power station, and then a haven for graffiti and squatters, nicknamed “the Batcave.” It has since been transformed into an epic art space overlooking the Gowanus canal by Herzog & de Meuron and PBDW Architects.

Guests were greeted by ambassadors in luminous, fate-themed attire who handed out custom “destined journeys”—each a personalized itinerary through Powerhouse’s labyrinthine fabrication studios. The movable feast began immediately, leading patrons through immersive stations in printmaking, ceramics, metalwork, textiles, and public art. Each studio came alive with demonstrations and culinary pairings—imaginative dishes and cocktails inspired by the materials and processes before them.

Laughter and conversation mingled with the hum of creation as guests sampled bites such as braised jackfruit banh mi sandwiches with lotus chips in the metalworking studio, and tacos screen printed with edible ink in the Printshop. Under the vaulted ceilings of the ceramics studio, artisan glazers guided attendees through a demonstration of 3D ceramic printing—giving a fateful glimpse into the future of the medium. While touring the Digital Print Lab, one artist showed visitors how to print on feathers on one of New York’s largest printers.

Over 700 benefit attendees and members of the public, headed over to Powerhouse’s historic Grand Hall to continue with the festivities. For the first time the Hall was converted into a comfortable theater for the night’s centerpiece performance of Sibyl. The work, a two-part opera by visionary South African artist William Kentridge, was presented as part of Powerhouse: International, a new arts festival. The production—a meditation on prophecy, memory, and choice—mesmerized the audience with projected animations, hand-painted backdrops, and a vivid score blending South African harmonies, piano, and chant by Nhlanhla Mahlangu and Kyle Shepherd. Sibyl recently earned a 2023 Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement. “He’s a magician, a sorcerer, and a conjurer and all of those things combined, and always creates a world that is filled with joy, and terror, magic and art,” shared Eric Shiner, Powerhouse Art’s President, who has led since 2023.

The performance shimmered with Kentridge’s signature blend of wit and philosophical inquiry. The evening’s opener, The Moment Has Gone, featured a live chorus accompanying Kentridge’s film, an elegy to time’s ceaseless passage. In the second part, Waiting for the Sibyl, dancers and singers turned prophecy into choreography, their shadows dissolving across vast screens of ink and collage. William Kentridge offered, “I really didn’t know how it would fit, but in fact it fits in really beautifully in the space.” By the finale, the entire Grand Hall seemed to agree and pulsate with creative electricity—a space transformed into a radiant threshold between art and fate.

The celebration drew a luminous roster of supporters and artists seen traversing the workshops or raising a glass beneath the hall’s arched beams, including La Vaughn Belle, Lauren Cohen, Liz Collins, Teresita Fernández, Zipora Fried, Nancy Lorenz, Jacob Olmedo, Victor “Marka27” Quiñonez, Ray Smith, Sophia Wallace, Jenny Kendler, Dread Scott, William Villalongo, and artist Naama Tsabar among others. Other guests included RoseLee Goldberg, gallerist Sarah Gavlak, Sonia Lopez, Barbara Cura, and longtime champions Joan Rechnitz, Cassie Rosenthal, and Laura Hanna, alongside sponsors including East West Bank and AllianceBernstein.

A vibrant spirit of collaboration defined the night. In keeping with PHA’s ethos of democratizing artistic process, guests were invited not only to watch but to make—to stitch, stamp, glaze, and print parts of their own journey.

By evening’s end, as candlelight flickered off polished steel installations in the metal shop, the Fête of the Fates had woven its spell. Artists and patrons, dreamers and craftspeople, shared a singular sense of anticipation—for art’s evolving role in shaping the world around them.

Powerhouse: International, a new arts festival will continue on at Powerhouse Arts until December 13