Franklin Furnace focuses on time-based art forms that may be vulnerable due to institutional neglect, cultural bias, politically unpopular content or their ephemeral or experimental nature.

The same year, the Franklin Furnace inaugurated Sequential Art for Kids, an arts-in-education program that places professional artists in New York City public school classrooms.

Since that time, Franklin Furnace has been presenting performance art to new audiences throughout New York City by developing strategic partnerships with institutions large and small, from The Brooklyn Museum and The New School for Social Research to Dixon Place, The Knitting Factory, and public spaces across the 5 boroughs.

[3] During its 20th anniversary season in 1996 and 1997, Franklin Furnace sold its original loft and reinvented itself as a "virtual institution," not identified with its real estate but rather with its resources, made accessible by electronic and other means.

[6] In mid-2020 in response to the global pandemic, Franklin Furnace pivoted to continue offering services for avant-garde artists and their aficionados by launching  the LOFT, an online digital presenting platform.

Among hundreds of artists who Franklin Furnace gave the opportunity to mount their first New York shows are Ida Applebroog, Guillaume Bijl, Dara Birnbaum, Willie Cole, Jenny Holzer, Tehching Hsieh, Barbara Kruger, Matt Mullican, Shirin Neshat, and Krzysztof Wodiczko.

Among the many performance artists who got their start at Franklin Furnace are Eric Bogosian, David Cale, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Karen Finley, Robbie McCauley, Theodora Skipitares, Michael Smith, and Paul Zaloom.

Additionally, Franklin Furnace's programs have  enabled more established artists like Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Jennifer Bartlett, Lee Breuer, Richard Foreman, Joan Jonas, Pope.L, and William Wegman to experiment in ways that would be inappropriate for mainstream venues.

The in-house periodical spanned a range of formats, including tabloids and posters, organizational newsletters, exhibition supplements and catalogs, and scholarly surveys of contemporary and historical artists book movements.

The range in media formats reflect the multitude of editors and designers who worked on the periodical, including Barbara Kruger, Richard McGuire, Linda Montano, and Buzz Spector.

Moore also edited the accompanying catalog, which features a color Xerox cover by Carolee Schneemann, artists' pages by Alison Knowles, Robert Wilson, and others, and a portfolio of Peter Moore's photographs of performances and installations by Suki Dewey, Geoff Hendricks, Guerrilla Art Action Group, Les Levine, Charlotte Moorman, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, and others, all friends and colleagues of Ken Dewey.

[11] Curators of this 1976 exhibition The Page as Alternative Space 1909-1929 included Clive Phillpot, 1909–1929; Charles Henri Ford, 1930–1949; Jon Hendricks and Barbara Moore, 1950–1969; Ingrid Sischy and Richard Flood, 1970–1980.

It featured original editions of artists' books by Guillaume Appollinaire, André Breton, Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Francis Picabia, Tristan Tzara and others.

The History of Disappearance, curated by Nicole Hood and Martha Wilson, was held at the BALTIC Center for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, UK, from June 18 through September 4, 2005.

Artists whose works were featured include Patty Chang, Andrea Fraser, Coco Fusco, Tehching Hsieh, Susan Mogul, Linda Montano, Pope.L., Matt Mullican and William Wegman.

The exhibition includes works by Bedevo et al., C.A.PA.TA.CO/GAS-TAR (Fernando Amengual, Mercedes Idoyaga "Emei", Fernando "Coco" Bedoya, Diego Fontanet, Joan Prim, Carlos N. Tirabassi, and Daniel Sanjurjo), Jaime Davidovich, León Ferrari, Por El Ojo (Julia Balmaceda, Federico Gonzalez, Daniel Sanjurjo, and Ignacio Sourrouille), Liliana Porter, and Dolores Zorreguieta.

Notably, in January 1984, Franklin Furnace presented the artists' collective Carnival Knowledge's Second Coming, a performance series that questioned the possibility of a more "feminist porn".

Following the closure, Franklin Furnace was demonized by Republican Senator Jesse Helms for presenting Karen Finley's A Woman's Life Isn't Worth Much (1990), which led to a U.S. General Accounting Office review and audits by the Internal Revenue Service.