Jason Price (MBA 2003) in the main gallery space at NXTHVN, the art community he cofounded in New Haven’s Dixwell neighborhood

Trying to capture the scope of what’s going on at NXTHVN, the nonprofit arts and community organization Jason Price (MBA 2003) cofounded with the artist Titus Kaphar, is like trying to catch a cloud with a butterfly net.

But stepping inside the building’s glassy entrance, a sense of direction takes hold and draws visitors toward the central gallery space. The exhibition this fall afternoon, Aesthetics of dis-order, features abstract paintings by the experimental artist Awilda Sterling-Duprey, a pillar of Puerto Rico’s art world for several decades. Meanwhile, a few floors above the gallery, a curator is paying a visit to Anindita Dutta to select one of her sculptures for a group show in New York. Dutta participated in NXTHVN’s 2022 cohort of fellows; when the yearlong program ended, she moved into one of the nonprofit’s four live/work spaces.

Dutta’s studio is a riot of raw materials; works in progress and piles of leather and velvet occupy every surface. One of her finished pieces hangs in a first-floor space, not far from where the high school students gather for their weekly Wednesday sessions. The apprentice program pairs nine high school students with the nine fellows—an exercise in “possibility thinking,” as Student Program Manager Jay Kemp describes it. The kids see firsthand what a career in the arts might look like; the fellows get an extra set of hands to help advance their own work.

The fellows’ studios occupy the eastern expanse of the building, which has been teeming with art and activity since 2018, when Price and Kaphar transformed two dilapidated factory buildings in a historically underserved section of New Haven into this: a 40,000-square-foot hive that radiates creativity, community, and opportunity.

Originally, Kaphar was just looking for extra studio space. Primarily a painter whose works can be found in the collections of major museums, Kaphar lives and works in New Haven. One day back in 2017, when the Yale School of Art’s annual open-studios event rolled around, he headed to campus with one of his young sons in tow. The boy lost interest in the art but gravitated to another child who’d also been dragged along, and the two started playing. When it was time to leave, the boys ran up to their fathers—also the only African American men in the room—and asked for a playdate.

“I looked at Titus, and he looked at me,” recalls Price; he decided to introduce himself. “I told him I was in private equity. He told me he’s a painter, had graduated from Yale, and was here looking at the artwork. We were kind of like, ‘How come we don’t know each other?’ Then Titus said, ‘Maybe you can help me with something. I’m looking at an old building, and I’ve never really purchased a building before.’ ”

Price knew that old buildings can be trouble. He’d been working until then with Omar Simmons (MBA 1999) at the private equity investment firm Exaltare Capital Partners. They’d built the largest Planet Fitness franchise in the country and had learned about commercial construction along the way. Price offered to put Kaphar in touch with a trusted contractor who would look at the building.

That conversation turned into many more focused on how to activate a space—actually, two factories’ worth—that was far too big for one person’s needs. They converged around an idea: “How do you get young artists in proximity with established artists to share knowledge,” Price says. “And how do you use art to inspire growth and impact in a community that needs it?”

The transition for Price from private equity to the arts might seem abrupt, but the pieces of the puzzle had been there all along, just waiting to be fit together. Back in the late 1990s, before he’d moved to New Haven with his wife and started raising a family, he was living in New York and had been invited to attend the Armory Show. The art fair was his first real exposure to the world-class world of art, and it became a defining moment for him. “I said to myself, if I could ever buy original work, that’s something I want to do,” Price recalls. Which is what had brought him to the Yale Open Studios: After selling the Planet Fitness business and finding some money in his pockets, he thought his moment to invest had arrived.

Six years and several million dollars in renovations later, NXTHVN is a living, breathing collaboration that exudes both Kaphar and Price’s expertise. First and foremost, it’s a community of creatives. From the high school apprentices through the fellows who are looking to break into the professional sphere, to established creators like Sterling-Duprey, the artists who come to NXTHVN occupy every step along the ladder of professionalism; they’re being coached along to the next. That’s the Kaphar effect.

It’s also a picture of vertical integration, as Price, the MBA of the partnership, explains: The manufacturing is the creativity. Four apartments provide affordable housing for artists and generate income while other spaces are rented out to small businesses; a cafe is set to open soon. The gallery brings other high-level artists to the neighborhood, and the local community knows it is always welcome in the central gathering space. That massive room has seen startup competitions, weddings, parties, and community conversations about justice. And it’s critical to NXTHVN: “As you think about that vertical integration, the gathering space really creates the network. If you’re good at what you’re doing, you can build the ties that allow this person to talk to that one—and then stuff happens, and new ideas begin to take shape,” Price observes.

He acknowledges that people may look at NXTHVN and assume it’s “another art residency in an old building, in a bad neighborhood with cheap rent.” That’s not a new story, Price says. Instead, NXTHVN is an impact model that begins with the arts and invites others in: “The thesis is that we can change the neighborhood through the arts.”

The fellowship program is designed as a career accelerator, to launch artists and curators who are equipped to make contributions to the field through their creative work. The year-long curriculum also covers business fundamentals that rarely get airtime in an MFA program, from negotiating contracts to gaining equity in relationships with collectors or through consignment agreements. This year’s cohort arrived from as far as China, Turkey, Uganda, and Washington.

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