Best place to build a biosphere or experiment with employment
It's tempting to say Boston needs more Berwick Research Institutes, but at the same time this laboratory for experimental art is undeniably inimitable. Founded in 2000 by eight artists dissatisfied with the city's lack of noncommercial space to create, perform, and display their work, the Berwick serves as an incubator for those who work outside convention and outside the commercial world. The artists took over a former Whoopie-pie bakery in Roxbury's Dudley Square, and have been a vanguard for promoting the kind of work that you will never, ever see (or hear or experience) on Newbury Street. For example, as part of the ongoing Artist in Research Program (AIR), artists have campaigned for president by holding experimental tea parties on platforms of mobiliTEA, securiTEA, and communiTEA; cultivated a green-as-can-be biosphere within the Berwick building; and put together the current project, "Help Wanted," which explores the façades and processes of landing a job. The Berwick may be one-of-a-kind, but it reminds us that Boston needs more places that champion the artists and the work that don't fall into neat, marketable categories.

Berwick Research Institute, 14 Palmer Street, Roxbury, (617) 442-4200, www.berwickinstitute.org.