Postmasters is a contemporary art gallery located in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five Boroughs of New York City, boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the List of co ...

Tribeca Tribeca (), originally written as TriBeCa, is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City. Its name is a syllabic abbreviation of "Triangle Below Canal Street". The "triangle" (more accurately a quadrilateral) is bounded by Canal Stre ...

neighborhood, owned and directed by

Magda Sawon Magda Sawon is a contemporary art gallerist and art world figure who founded and owns New York's Postmasters Gallery (with her husband Tamas Banovich), a gallery for young and established contemporary artists, especially those working in new medi ...

and Tamas Banovich. The Postmasters gallery opened in the East Village in December 1984, moved to

SoHo Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century. The area was develo ...

in 1989, and was relocated to Chelsea in September 1998. In June 2013 Postmasters was moved to 54 Franklin Street in Tribeca, taking over a ground-floor space complete with a large functional basement. The gallery has a history of exhibiting work in media that is challenging for a commercial art gallery, including the work of several Net.artists and political activists. For example, Maciej Wisniewski's media-rich e-mail software Netomat was exhibited as an artwork at the gallery in 1999 before being exhibited at the Whitney Museum of Art in 2000. The gallery's decision to exhibit software as an art form engages the

Marshall McLuhan Herbert Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media studies, media theory. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridg ...

-coined concept " The medium is the message" by updating it with Wisnieski's belief that the artist's role is to challenge the existing notion of software development and distribution.' And in May 2010,

Chatroulette Chatroulette is an online chat website that pairs random users with a choice between two other users for webcam-based conversations. Visitors to the website begin an online chat (audio, and video) with another visitor. At any point, either user ...

became both medium and subject for artists Eva & Franco Mattes AKA

0100101110101101.ORG Eva & Franco Mattes (both born in Italy in 1976) are a duo of artists based in New York City. Operating under the pseudonym 0100101110101101.org, they are counted among the pioneers of the Net Art movement and are known for their subversion of pu ...

. On September 6, 2001, German-born artist Wolfgang Staehle, installed three live-feed video projections in the gallery, one of which was a panoramic view of

Lower Manhattan Lower Manhattan (also known as Downtown Manhattan or Downtown New York) is the southernmost part of Manhattan, the central borough for business, culture, and government in New York City, which is the most populated city in the United States with ...

, which would remain on view for the rest of the month. The feed captured the terrorist attacks of September 11th, transforming a fixed image of the city into what the art critic Roberta Smith of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' called "a live

history painting History painting is a genre in painting defined by its subject matter rather than any artistic style or specific period. History paintings depict a moment in a narrative story, most often (but not exclusively) Greek and Roman mythology and Bible ...

." In 2007, Hong Kong-based artist and Internet activist Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung exhibited a video critical of the George W. Bush Administration entitled "Because Washington Is Hollywood for Ugly People". On occasion, Sawon has allowed artists to direct the public's attention to her own role as an art dealer. In 1992 the gallery hosted an exhibition of work by Silvia Kolbowski that featured posters of the gallery itself. In an event called "Ask the Dealer," during the month-long Hashtag Class series at Winkleman Gallery in 2010, Sawon promised to truthfully answer any question asked of her regarding her experience as a gallerist.

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* {{coord, 40, 43, 1.7, N, 74, 0, 10.2, W, type:landmark_region:US-NY, display=title Art museums and galleries in Manhattan Art galleries established in 1984 1984 establishments in New York City Chelsea, Manhattan Contemporary art galleries in the United States Tribeca