Art Show on a Shoestring

When Brooklyn artist Lara Allen scored a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Swing Space grant last year, she thought she had secured both a great gallery and up to $3,000 in funding for a meditation on myth and female power entitled I, Daughter of Kong.

Then the funding LMCC hoped to provide fell victim to the recession.

But instead of canceling the show, Allen brought new meaning to her original idea of an artistic collaboration. She began securing donations and soliciting not just creative work from artists, but contributions of time and labor. As a result, the show has gone on—and is, perhaps, even more creative that it would have been. It opened last week and runs through May 10…