Film honors Lois Dodd, Eleanor Magid, and Louise Kruger, who navigated gender discrimination to establish groundbreaking East Village creative space
Building a Legacy: Three Single Mothers and the East Village Live/Work Revolution
A new documentary, “Artists in Residence,” premiering at the 2025 DOC NYC film festival, tells the story of how three women defied banking discrimination and social convention to establish one of New York’s most significant creative live/work spaces. In 1968, painters, printmakers, and sculptors Lois Dodd, Eleanor Magid, and Louise Kruger purchased a former factory building in the East Village, each claiming a floor as personal residence and studio.
Navigating Systemic Discrimination
The path to ownership revealed systemic barriers. When their landlord, a local mortician, decided to sell the building, Dodd and Magid proposed purchase. Yet no bank would grant them mortgages. Institutional policy explicitly prohibited lending to single women until the passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act in 1974. Dodd’s innovative solution–requesting a personal loan directly from their landlord–bypassed banking discrimination. The mortician obliged, granting them financing that banks denied.
Putting Art First: Extraordinary Commitment
The three artists prioritized their work with uncommon devotion. Dodd discarded her bed to maximize studio space, sleeping on a roll-up mattress she still uses decades later. Dodd established herself as a painter capturing streetscapes and gardens through her third-floor windows, using frames as compositional borders. She co-founded the Tanager Gallery on East 10th Street, the first artist-run cooperative that catalyzed the alternative gallery district.
Expanding Community Through Art
Magid distinguished herself through community engagement and multimedia practice. During the 1968 teachers’ strike, she founded the Lower East Side Printshop, providing neighborhood youth access to printmaking while schools remained closed. The organization evolved into the city’s largest printmaking facility, still operating today. Kruger pursued sculptural practice and woodworking, training with a New Jersey shipbuilder and studying metalworking at Italian and Ghanaian foundries.
Lessons for Contemporary Housing Crisis
The artists’ story resonates with contemporary urban affordability challenges that dominate New York political discourse. Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani frequently cites affordable housing as central to citywide prosperity. “How do I want to be remembered? The work, the work, the work,” Dodd reflects in the documentary. “The work is who I am. When I’m gone, that’s all that’s left.” The film continues screening through November 30, 2025, with additional information available through DOC NYC at docnyc.net.
