The OK Harris Gallery was an art gallery located at 383 West Broadway in

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 develop ...

, New York City. The gallery closed in 2014. Founded by longtime

art dealer An art dealer is a person or company that buys and sells works of art, or acts as the intermediary between the buyers and sellers of art. An art dealer in contemporary art typically seeks out various artists to represent, and builds relationshi ...

Ivan Karp Ivan C. Karp (June 4, 1926 – June 28, 2012) was an American art dealer, gallerist and author instrumental in the emergence of pop art and the development of Manhattan's SoHo gallery district in the 1960s. Ivan Karp was born in the Bronx and gr ...

after leaving the

Leo Castelli Leo Castelli (born Leo Krausz; September 4, 1907 – August 21, 1999) was an Italian-American art dealer who originated the contemporary art gallery system. His gallery showcased contemporary art for five decades. Among the movements which ...

gallery in 1969 where he had worked as gallery co-director for nearly 10 years. Karp opened his own gallery called the ''OK Harris Gallery'' in

(which at the time was one of the first galleries in the newest gallery district in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

). Previously located at 465 West Broadway, in the early 1970s it hosted exhibits by emerging artists as well as well known veteran artists.

History

Ivan C. Karp was a co-director of

Leo Castelli Gallery Leo Castelli (born Leo Krausz; September 4, 1907 – August 21, 1999) was an Italian-American art dealer who originated the contemporary art gallery system. His gallery showcased contemporary art for five decades. Among the movements which ...

from 1959 to 1969. In 1969 he broke away and founded OK Harris in the SoHo district of Manhattan. Karp chose the fictitious OK Harris name as it "sounded like the name of an American riverboat gambler." As the second gallery on West Broadway (following Paula Cooper who had opened in SoHo in 1968) OK Harris was instrumental in the area's development as a center of fine arts. In addition to being at the forefront of the

Photorealism Photorealism is a genre of art that encompasses painting, drawing and other graphic media, in which an artist studies a photograph and then attempts to reproduce the image as realistically as possible in another medium. Although the term can be ...

movement in 1969, OK Harris was among the first galleries to exhibit the work of

Duane Hanson Duane Hanson (January 17, 1925 – January 6, 1996) was an American artist and sculptor born in Minnesota. He spent most of his career in South Florida. He was known for his life-sized realistic sculptures of people. He cast the works based o ...

Deborah Butterfield Deborah Kay Butterfield (born May 7, 1949) is an American sculptor. Along with her artist-husband John Buck, she divides her time between a farm in Bozeman, Montana, and studio space in Hawaii. She is known for her sculptures of horses made fr ...

Manny Farber Emanuel Farber (February 20, 1917 – August 18, 2008) was an American painter, film critic and writer. Often described as "iconoclastic",Grimes, William (August 19, 2008) ''New York Times''Kiderra, Inga (August 21, 2008Obituary: Artist and Crit ...

Richard Pettibone Richard is a male given name. It originates, via Old French, from Old Frankish and is a compound of the words descending from Proto-Germanic ''*rīk-'' 'ruler, leader, king' and ''*hardu-'' 'strong, brave, hardy', and it therefore means 'stron ...

Robert Cottingham Robert Cottingham (born 1935 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American artist known for his paintings and prints of urban American landscapes showing building facades, neon signs, movie marquees, railroad heralds and shop fronts.

Robert Bechtle Robert Alan Bechtle (May 14, 1932 – September 24, 2020) was an American Painting, painter, printmaker, and educator. He lived nearly all his life in the San Francisco Bay Area and whose art was centered on scenes from everyday local life. His pa ...

Marilyn Levine Marilyn Levine (born 22 December 1935 in Medicine Hat, Alberta, died. 2 April 2005 in Oakland, California) was a Canadian ceramics artist known for her trompe-l'œil art. She built a reputation making ceramic works of art that looked like leather h ...

, Nancy Rubins,

Malcolm Morley Malcolm A. Morley (June 7, 1931 – June 1, 2018) was a British-American artist and painter. He was known as an artist who pioneered in varying styles, working as a photorealist and an expressionist, among many other styles. Life Morley was ...

, Luis Jiminez, Jake Berthot,

Jack Goldstein Jack Goldstein (September 27, 1945 – March 14, 2003) was a Canadian born, California-based performance and conceptual artist turned painter in the 1980s art boom. Early life and education Goldstein was born to a Jewish family in Montreal, Q ...

Porfirio DiDonna Porfirio DiDonna (1942–1986) was an American artist. Life Porfirio DiDonna was born on 11 April 1942 in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Frank and Mary DiDonna. He had an older brother and sister, Salvatore and Joanne, and a younger sister, Cathe ...

, Al Souza. OK Harris exhibited contemporary art and photography, and on occasion mounted shows of antiques and collectibles. In its capacious 8000 square foot space, it was able to mount up to five one-person shows simultaneously and has multiple such exhibitions in the course of a year. The gallery maintained a complete photographic archive on its exhibitions from the time of its inception, freely available to students and scholars for research. During the early 1970s it hosted exhibits by

Alan Vega Boruch Alan Bermowitz (June 23, 1938 – July 16, 2016), known professionally as Alan Vega, was an American vocalist and visual artist, primarily known for his work with the electronic protopunk duo Suicide. Life and career Boruch Alan Berm ...

, some of which were advertised as "Punk Music" predating the later Punk rock by some years.

References

External links

Official site
Art galleries established in 1969 Art galleries disestablished in 2014 1969 establishments in New York City 2014 disestablishments in New York (state) Defunct art museums and galleries in Manhattan SoHo, Manhattan {{Manhattan-struct-stub