City Gallery was an

art gallery An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The long ...

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

that exhibited the work of contemporary artists in a loft space that was run collectively by a group of young avant-garde artists.

History

In November 1958, artists

Red Grooms Red Grooms (born Charles Rogers Grooms on June 7, 1937) is an American multimedia artist best known for his colorful pop-art constructions depicting frenetic scenes of modern urban life. Grooms was given the nickname "Red" by Dominic Falcone ( ...

and Jay Milder, founded the City Gallery inside of Grooms' third-floor walk-up inside of a Flatiron Loft, which was located at 735

Sixth Avenue Sixth Avenue, also known as Avenue of the Americas, is a major thoroughfare in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The avenue is commercial for much of its length, and traffic runs northbound, or uptown. Sixth Avenue begins four blocks b ...

(the northwest corner of Twenty-Forth street).Judith Stein, "Red Grooms the Early Years (1937-1960)", ''Red Grooms A Retrospective'', (Philadelphia:

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is a museum and private art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1805, it is the longest continuously operating art museum and art school in the United States. The academy's museum ...

, 1985) The loft was around twenty feet by forty feet and was primarily being used as a Grooms' studio. Grooms and Milder were previously part of the Phoenix Gallery, a cooperative art gallery founded during the 10th Street gallery boom. When Phoenix Gallery declined to show

Claes Oldenburg Claes Oldenburg (January 28, 1929 – July 18, 2022) was a Swedish-born American sculptor best known for his public art installations, typically featuring large replicas of everyday objects. Another theme in his work is soft sculpture versions ...

's work, Grooms and Milder dropped out of Phoenix and City Gallery organized Oldenberg's first New York City exhibition. The City Gallery gallery ceased operations in May 1959 when Grooms left the city for the summer. After Grooms returned to New York in the fall, he moved downtown to Delancey Street and subsequently founded the Delancey Street Museum, which featured many of the same artists exhibited at City Gallery, and also presented some of the first 'Happenings.' The building that housed City Gallery was demolished soon after the Grooms moved out.

Exhibitions

In addition to Oldenberg's solo New York debut, City Gallery also presented

Jim Dine Jim Dine (born June 16, 1935) is an American artist. Dine's work includes painting, drawing, printmaking (in many forms including lithographs, etchings, gravure, intaglio, woodcuts, letterpress, and linocuts), sculpture, and photography. Educ ...

's inaugural New York City exhibition. Other artists who showed at City Gallery included Mica Nava (née Michaela Weisselberg), Chris Lane, Gandy Brodie, Sari Dienes, Jackie Ferrara, Stephen Durkee,

Mimi Gross Mimi Gross (born 1940) is a New York City born American artist. Biography Early life Gross was born in New York City in 1940. She is the daughter of the sculptor Chaim Gross. She grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan among the artist comm ...

, Bob Thompson, Lester Johnson, Robert Beauchamp, George Nelson Preston, Joan Herbst, Peter Passuntino, Budd Hopkins, Emily Mason, Wolf Kahn, and

Alex Katz Alex Katz (born July 24, 1927) is an American figurative artist known for his paintings, sculptures, and printmaking, prints. Since 1951, Katz's work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions and nearly 500 group exhibitions through ...

. Milder and Grooms also exhibited their work in group shows with their peers. In an interview with art historian, Judith Stein, Grooms recalls, "We were reacting to Tenth Street. In '58 and '59, Tenth Street was sort of like

SoHo SoHo, short for "South of Houston Street, Houston Street", is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Since the 1970s, the neighborhood has been the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, art installations such as The Wall ...

is now, and it was getting all the lively attention of everyone downtown....We were just kids in our twenties..and had a flair for attracting people to our openings."

References

{{coord, 40.744, -73.991, type:landmark_globe:earth_region:US-NY, display=title Defunct art museums and galleries in New York City Art museums and galleries established in 1958 1958 establishments in New York City Avant-garde art Art museums and galleries disestablished in 1959 Contemporary art galleries in the United States