Park Place Gallery


Park Place Gallery was a contemporary art gallery located in SoHo in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States, during the mid-to-late 1960s. Park Place Gallery was located at 542 West Broadway, on what is now LaGuardia Place just north of Houston Street adjacent to the neighborhood that is now called "SoHo". It is thought of as being the first gallery of the 1960s in that area of Lower Manhattan.
Originally opened as a cooperative gallery in 1963 near Park Place in Lower Manhattan, in 1965 it moved to a new and larger location at 542 West Broadway. The gallery was a large open exhibition space with an office and second showing space in the back. In general there were two-person exhibitions each featuring a painter and a sculptor in the larger front room, and a small selection of artists work in the back room. The first director of Park Place Gallery was John Gibson who later opened his own gallery in the early 1970s. He was succeeded by Paula Cooper who after Park Place Gallery closed in the late 1960s opened the Paula Cooper Gallery in SoHo. She became a pioneer of the contemporary art scene and a forerunner of the population explosion of art galleries in New York City during the 1970s.

The gallery

The gallery showcased works by younger, less established artists with an emphasis on Geometric abstraction, shaped canvas, Hard-edge painting, Op Art, paradoxical geometric objects, sculpture, and experimental art. Many of the sculptors, painters and other artists who exhibited in Park Place Gallery were interested in cutting edge architecture, electronic music, and minimal art. The gallery also exhibited the works of lesser known young and older artists, often for the first time. Some of the artists that were exhibited at the Park Place Gallery included Mark di Suvero, Leo Valledor, Peter Forakis , Dean Fleming, Bernard Kirschenbaum, Anthony Magar, Forrest Myers, Ed Ruda, Robert Grosvenor, Tamara Melcher, David Novros, Gay Glading, Jon Baldwin, and several others. Some of the artists that were invited to show, or play concerts or read poetry at the gallery included Ronald Bladen, Sol LeWitt, Eva Hesse, Al Held, Sylvia Stone, Robert Smithson, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Brice Marden, Charles Ginnever, Charles Ross, Robert Morris, Kenneth Snelson, Robert Swain, Carlos Villa, Mario Yrissary, Peter Reginato, Ronnie Landfield, Carl Andre, Jake Berthot, David R. Prentice, Mac Wells, Bob Neuwirth, Joan Jonas, and dozens of young and unknown painters, sculptors, conceptual artists, performance artists and composers among others.

Background

In the early 1960s, artists from all over the country moved to Lower Manhattan's lofts and warehouse buildings, in what used to be known as "Hells Hundred Acres", which became large and inexpensive studios. Dealers and gallery owners opened new gallery spaces nearby.
By 1966, SoHo was a growing artist community, and Park Place Gallery became a meeting ground for artists. Especially crowded and popular were the music performances and other special programs hosted by the gallery. During the mid-to-late 1960s and the early 1970s Max's Kansas City on Park Avenue South between 17th and 18th Streets and the St. Adrian's bar on lower Broadway became hangouts for young artists, writers, poets, and creative people in downtown Manhattan.

The avant-garde

In the late 1960s and early 1970s art shattered into many directions: Conceptual Art, Earth Art, Lyrical Abstraction, Minimal Art, Postminimalism, Performance art, and the continuation of Abstract expressionism, Color field painting, Op Art and Pop Art. A significant development in the New York art world was the birth of the gallery scene in SoHo. It signaled the enormous financial growth of the art world. Suddenly there were waves of new galleries and collectors. The appetite for the acquisition of the new was voracious. For a short time the artist's life was no longer based on the idea of suffering and struggle. The baby boom generation ushered in a new phenomenon of instant success, driven by the expanding demand for art in the galleries.
In New York City during the 1950s, the avant-garde was a blend of hot and cool art. The Tenth Street cooperative galleries were formed mostly by young artists of both types seeking a place to show their work. The cooperative galleries served as an alternative to the conservative 57th Street and uptown Madison Avenue galleries that dominated the art scene.
During the early-to-mid-1960s this group of young artists that formed the Park Place Gallery revolutionized what was possible for young artists. By pioneering SoHo, the Park Place Gallery showed many important young artists often for the first time, who went on to become famous and successful. The original members: Mark di Suvero, Frosty Myers, Robert Grosvenor, Ed Ruda, Dean Fleming, Leo Valledor, Peter Forakis, Tamara Melcher, Tony Magar and later David Novros, John Baldwin and Gay Glading were all cutting edge young artists. Attracting funding from the Lannan Foundation and private collectors and with John Gibson and later Paula Cooper as directors, Park Place became a lightning rod of attention for the downtown art scene. With experimental ideas and invitational exhibitions, Park Place Gallery served as a forum for both hot and cool art. It became a center for the downtown avant-garde as well, with weekly poetry readings, concerts by new electronic composers, and openings that always drew large crowds of young artists.

2008

In September 2008 the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin presented an exhibition entitled: Reimagining Space: The Park Place Gallery Group in 1960s New York curated by Linda Dalrymple Henderson. The exhibition ran from September 28, 2008 – January 18, 2009.

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