Arleen Schloss

Arleen Schloss (born December 12, 1943, in Brooklyn, New York) is an American painter, performance artist, video/film artist, sound poet, multimedia director and art curator of the lower Manhattan art, video art, performance art and No Wave music scenes. Schloss began her influence through A's – an interdisciplinary art loft space in New York City that became a hub for noise music, art exhibitions, performance art, films and art videos. Artists and performers such as Glenn Branca, Y Pants, Jean-Michel Basquiat's noise music band Gray, solo performances by Eric Bogosian, Phoebe Legere's band Monad, pre-Sonic Youth Thurston Moore's post-punk band The Coachmen, Liquid Liquid, Carolee Schneemann, Alan Vega's band Suicide, Martin Wong, and Ai Weiwei performed, exhibited and got their start at A's. In the 1990s A's became A's Wave where early net art and other forms of digital art were shown.

A 2024 film by Stuart Ginsberg called IT'S A to Z: The ART OF ARLEEN SCHLOSS and a 2021 book by Baptiste Brévart, Guillaume Ettlinger, Guillaume Loizillon & Pauline Chevalier for Anamosa Books called Wednesday’s At A’s have documented Schloss's no wave period and her A's scene. Art historically, she has been associated with the Rivington School of art which was based on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Concurrently with A's, Schloss established herself as a curator, co-organizing shows at Danceteria and the Storefront for Art and Architecture. Jack Tilton and Gracie Mansion both guest curated art exhibitions at A's.

Schloss operated as a performance artist in the 1970s, for example with her performance Words & Music at Bykert Gallery in 1975. The New York Times stated that her performances were "superior to much performance art." and the SoHo Weekly News noted that her voice was "musical the way Patti Smith or Yoko Ono are musical."