ARTeriors (Excerpt from The Arts Dispatch)
ARTeriors was first staged in 2015 by Joyce Hagen, founding executive director of the Atlantic City Arts Foundation. In this signature program, artists transform a property in transition into an immersive, short-term group art show—highlighting Atlantic City’s capacity for innovation, evolution, and creative renewal. Both established and emerging artists are invited to collaborate, experiment with new mediums, and create large-scale, site-specific installations. Each ARTeriors exhibition is shaped by the artists’ interactions with one another and the space itself, resulting in a one-of-a-kind experience rooted in time, place, and community.
- Loryn L. Simonsen, Artist & Graphic Designer, Lo in SoJo Designs
Since 2015, ARTeriors has been a kind of moving sermon for Atlantic City. Each year, artists have stepped into vacant spaces and filled them with light, noise, and imagination. What began on Tennessee Avenue in a forgotten storefront grew into a ritual of transformation, claiming bakeries, hotels, and candy factories as temporary altars for the city’s creative spirit.
Every version has reflected a different truth about Atlantic City: that it can be rough and glittering at once, that beauty grows in the cracks, that art doesn’t wait for permission. Along the way came cardboard saints like “ARTie,” warehouse temples built of glue and grit, and a long list of artists who made their mark before the walls came down again.
Now, the 11th ARTeriors rises inside a former church on Pacific Avenue. “The Ministry of ARTeriors” gathers artists once more to turn what was sacred into something living. Inside these walls, the old spirit of Farmers Row meets a new one — a communion of food, art, and community. As the city continues to shift and shimmer, ARTeriors remains what it has always been: a celebration of rebirth, and a reminder that the divine can look a lot like home.
- Claire Downey Hughes, Founder & Editor, The Diving Horse
Originally published November 2025, Issue No. 1, The Arts Dispatch.
Interested in a copy of The Arts Dispatch?
Copies are $5.00
Purchase a digital copy in our shop.
Purchase a print copy at The Ministry of ARTeriors during gallery hours.