How Artists Invented Downtown

At the Grey Art Gallery through April 1

In 1950’s and 1960’s New York, Pop Art had yet to transform the art world, Soho was still light years away and young contemporary artists were fed up with the slick commercialism of the galleries uptown. So they migrated down to lower Manhattan where space was plentiful and created their own places to make and show art. The result was a diverse and thriving artist-owned art scene where innovation and experimentation flourished.

Inventing Downtown: Artist-Run Galleries in New York City, 1952–1965 captures the spirit of this pivotal time, bringing together over 200 items—paintings, assemblage, sculpture, works on paper, fascinating ephemera and documentary photographs. The early work of Alex Katz and Jim Dine is featured, but also candid images like a young, sultry Yoko Ono perched on a piano pre-performance or Red Grooms wheeling an oversized painting across a busy intersection in a baby carriage. Inventing Downtown offers a rare intimate look at a movement that made the contemporary art of today possible. The show is on view at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery through April 1.

PROVOKR members can view some of the highlights of this fascinating show, above and below.