Open House Weekends at the RU House on Governors Island
August 15-16, 22-23, 29-30 and September 5-6, 12-13, 2026 | 11 am – 5 pm
Location: RU House at Colonels Row, Building #404B on Governors Island (map)
Ferry information | Video directions
(Free ferry rides on weekends before 11 am).
On the above mentioned weekends in August and September, we warmly invite you to visit the RU House on Governors Island and discover works realized in their studios by RU resident artists and local alumni Elisa Bertaglia, Maureen Catbagan, Hayley Ferber, Chris Glabb, Gabriele Grones, Olga Pastekova, and Tharini Sankarasubramanian. These open studios are made possible as part of the 2026 Organizations in Residence program enabling RU presence on Colonels Row from May through October.
About:
Elisa Bertaglia has presented her work internationally at various venues, galleries and museums including: Hic sunt Leones, solo show, Palazzo Madama, Turin, Italy (2020); CAF – Nebula, Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, Japan (2019); Cendriers, MZ Galerie, Augsburg, Germany (2019); Progetto Borca, Borca, Italy (2014); 54ma Venice Biennale, Academy Pavilion, Arsenale, Venice, Italy (2011); Art and Science, Guggenheim Museum, Venice, Italy (2010). Her work has been selected for various awards including the Exibart Prize (Rome, Italy); Arte Laguna Prize (Venice, Italy); Sunny Art Prize (London, United Kingdom); OTTN (Milan, Italy); Bevilacqua La Masa (Venice, Italy). Previously Bertaglia has participated in artist residencies such as ESKFF, at MANA Contemporary (Jersey City), Kunstraum (Brooklyn), Dolomiti Contemporanee and Progetto Borca (Italy). Her works are in select permanent collections such as the Collection City of Milan, Banca Sistema and Eileen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation.
Maureen Catbagan is a Filipinx-American multimedia artist based in New York whose work explores immigration, labor, visibility, and social collectivity. A 2023 NYC-Based Artist Residency Program artist with Abang-guard, Catbagan collaborates with Flux Factory, Yams Collective, and Abang-guard with Jevijoe Vitug. Recent exhibitions include Theseus’s Craft: The Paradox of the Real at Lichtundfire Gallery, New York (2026); Abang-guard: Makibaka at the Queens Museum (2025–2026); and Alagaan ang Salaysáy (Take Care of the Story) at Flux IV (2025). Their work has been exhibited, screened, and/or performed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Abrons Art Center, Socrates Sculpture Park, and The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu. Catbagan has completed residencies at Residency Unlimited, DUMBO Arts Center, Governors Island, ARoS Museum Public Atelier in Denmark, and Art Quarter Budapest in Hungary. Fellowships and grants include the 2025 NYSCA Support for Artists Grant, 2025 NYFA-Queens Arts Fund: Arts Access Grant, and the 2024–2025 Queens Museum–Jerome Foundation Fellowship.
Hayley Ferber is a Brooklyn-based independent curator, educator, and artist with a professional mission to support a creative community of multidisciplinary artists. She has served in the roles of Artistic & Development Director of the Pelham Art Center, Operations Director at The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center and Deputy Director of Chashama. Hayley has curated more than 20 exhibitions for institutions including Westbeth Gallery, BronxArtSpace, Residency Unlimited, SVA Residencies, All Street Gallery, 440 Gallery, Lichtundfire, and the Consulate General of Brazil in New York among others. She has visited with artists from ISCP, NARS Foundation, Kunstraum LLC and Art Cake and has contributed to jury panels for NYSCA, DCLA, Brooklyn Arts Council, and Queens Council on the Arts. Hayley holds an MAT in Art & Design Education from RISD and a BS in Studio Art from NYU.
Chris Glabb is an emerging artist of mixed Métis and European descent working between Canada and New York City. He completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Ottawa in 2024. Chris is an incoming MFA student in Fine Arts at Parsons School of Design. His work has been presented in exhibitions across Canada and the United States, including XL at AXENÉO7 in 2023 and At a Glance at the Ottawa Art Gallery in 2025. He has presented solo exhibitions at the Shenkman Arts Centre in 2025 and the Niagara Artists Centre in 2026. His work centres issues of hierarchy, intersectional Queerness, and Indigenous identity through referentiality, humour, and the appropriation of existing images. With a Post-Pop sensibility, his practice draws from visual culture to question social belonging, using references as points of entry and recognition.
Gabriele Grones is a painter and visual artist whose work explores the intersection between nature and cultural memory. Rooted in meticulous observation and shaped by the visual vocabulary of art history and iconography, his paintings investigate how plants, figures, and objects embody layered meanings shaped by tradition and culture. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Grones has participated in two editions of the Venice Biennale: Atelier Aperti (2005) and Lo Stato dell’Arte – Art Academies Pavilion at the Arsenale (2011). In 2021, he held a solo exhibition at Ca’ Pesaro – International Museum of Modern Art in Venice. His work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including the National Portrait Gallery in London, MEAM in Barcelona, MART in Rovereto, Palazzo Fulcis Museum in Belluno, the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, the Museum of Art in Cluj-Napoca, the National Museum of Fine Arts in Valletta, and the Volkskunstmuseum in Innsbruck. He was selected for the BP Portrait Award in 2008 and has participated in residencies including Residency Unlimited, ICAA, and Wave Hill in New York.
Olga Pastekova’s practice explores ecological and social relationships between humans, animals, nature, and civilization. She mainly works with painting on canvas and paper, combining traditional techniques with experimental approaches such as layering and the use of light. Pastekova creates visual “landscapes” that move between image and symbol, often inspired by mythological thinking and posthumanist perspectives. She is interested in how contemporary life reshapes the boundaries between nature and culture, and how these tensions can be translated into painterly language. Displaying Olga Pastekova’s current works always involves entering a melancholic, fragile landscape with an often disturbed balance. For a long time, she has been building her program consisting of paintings with a very personal appeal and challenge about the dehumanized contemporary world and its destructive relationship with nature and other living creatures. Her previous paintings intensively reveal the intuitive, wild, and unrestrained power of nature, but also human nature – hence the ravens, wolves, werewolves, and the lunatic power of the dark night. This emotional charge is amplified by barely indicated figures – unclear shadows, ghosts, vague outlines of tense bodies. It is a metaphorical and fearless entry into an enchanted forest and the urban outskirts.
Tharini Sankarasubramanian works across drawing, painting, and fiber art. Her practice is grounded in symbolic language, geometric abstraction, and her ongoing study of Indian philosophy, esoteric traditions, and the unseen forces that animate the world. Shaped by her upbringing in India, her work moves between the personal and the metaphysical. She holds an MFA in Graphic Design and Visual Experience from the Savannah College of Art and Design. In 2024, she completed a residency at Residency Unlimited in Brooklyn, NY. The interview, Summoning Unity: A Conversation with Tharini Sankarasubramanian, was published by Apotheosis Art in 2023.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. In-kind support is provided by Materials for the Arts.
RU is grateful for the partnership with Governors Island Arts.
