Branchline Opens in Katonah With Free Shows of Indigenous Art
A family art collection now has a free public home in Katonah, a small community in New York's Westchester County. Branchline, the exhibition space for the Gochman Family Collection, sits less than two blocks from the Katonah train station.
The collection is built around contemporary Indigenous art, meaning work made by Indigenous artists today. It holds more than 850 works, according to ArtNews. Becky Gochman founded the collection and looks after it as its custodian, a word for the person who cares for and answers for the works.
Most of the collection does not sit in one place. About 200 works are usually out on loan to museums and other institutions around the world at any given time. Branchline gives the family a home base where visitors can see the work in Katonah itself.
The name comes from a railway term. A "branch line" is a track that splits off from the main route. Branchline describes that spot as the place where paths diverge and new paths begin.
The first exhibition, "Line Break," fills the nearly 2,000-square-foot main gallery. It brings together work by eighteen artists, made since the 1950s. The show is organized around cartography, the craft of making maps, and the way maps draw borders and mark who belongs where. Moonoka Begay, assistant curator of the Gochman Family Collection, co-curated the show with collection associate Nicola van Brugge.
The building holds more than one kind of space. The ground floor has a three-room gallery, and a ceramics studio is downstairs. Upstairs, two bedrooms are set aside for an artist-in-residence program, where artists can live and work.
The space is not finished. The collection says Branchline will eventually total 10,000 square feet across four buildings. For now, the gallery is the main attraction.
The opening celebration was set for November 6, 2026, from 6 to 9 p.m., according to the collection's Branchline page. The evening was planned with music from Miss Ginger, a DJ based in New Mexico, along with food and drinks. Admission to the space is free.
What makes this stand out is the price of entry. Many collections of this size are seen only by invitation, or through a loan that travels to a museum far away. Here, a visitor can walk in from the train platform and see the works without paying. Branchline will house contemporary Indigenous and American art from the collection, and it is set up to stay open as a permanent space, not a one-off show.
For people in Katonah and along the Metro-North line, the change is simple. A new room for art is now a short walk from the station, with a schedule of shows and a studio for working artists. For anyone further away, the collection's website lists the details of the space and its programs.
