The Park Place Gallery was a contemporary cooperative art gallery, in operation from 1963 to 1967, and was located 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 ...

. The Park Place Gallery was a notable as a post-World War II gallery for both its location and that it supported a group of artists working with geometric abstraction and space. It is thought of as being the first gallery of the 1960s in that area of Lower Manhattan. Park Place Gallery was located at 542 West Broadway, adjacent to the neighborhood that is now called,

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 ...

. 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 John Gibson 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 The Paula Cooper Gallery is an art gallery in New York City, founded in 1968 by . History Predecessors Cooper ran her own space, the ''Paula Johnson Gallery'', from 1964 to 1966, where Walter De Maria launched his first solo show in New York. ...

in SoHo. She became a pioneer of the contemporary art scene and a forerunner of the population explosion of art galleries in

during the 1970s.

History

Precursors

In the early 1960s, artists from all over the country moved to

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 ...

'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,

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 Max's Kansas City was a nightclub and restaurant at 213 Park Avenue South in New York City, which became a gathering spot for musicians, poets, artists and politicians in the 1960s and 1970s. It was opened by Mickey Ruskin (1933–1983) in Decembe ...

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.

Early Park Place Gallery

The first location of the gallery was at near Park Place in Lower Manhattan. The Park Place Gallery was founded in 1962 as a cooperative art gallery by 10 artists, including

Mark di Suvero Marco Polo di Suvero (born September 18, 1933, in Shanghai, China), better known as Mark di Suvero, is an abstract expressionist sculptor and 2010 National Medal of Arts recipient. Biography Early life and education Marco Polo di Suvero was bor ...

, Dean Fleming, Robert Grosvenor,

Forrest Myers Forrest Warden Myers, also known as Frosty Myers (born 1941 in Long Beach, California) is an American sculptor. He is best known for his pieces ''Moon Museum'' (1969) and ''The Wall'' (1973), the latter being a monumental wall sculpture in the S ...

Peter Forakis Peter Forakis (September 22, 1927 – November 26, 2009) was an American artist and professor. He was known as an abstract geometric sculptor. Early life and education Peter Forakis was born on September 22, 1927, in Hanna, Wyoming. The son of ...

Leo Valledor Leo Valledor (1936–1989) was a Filipino-American painter who pioneered the hard-edge painting style. During the 1960s he was a member of the Park Place Gallery in Soho, New York City, which exhibited many influential and significant artists of ...

, Tamara Melcher, Tony Magar, and Edwin Ruda. The first director of the space was John Gibson (1933–2019; later of John Gibson Gallery). Later artists to join the cooperative community included David Novros, John Baldwin, and Gay Glading. The gallery showcased works by younger, less established artists with an emphasis on

Geometric abstraction Geometric abstraction is a form of abstract art based on the use of geometric forms sometimes, though not always, placed in non-illusionistic space and combined into non-objective (non-representational) compositions. Although the genre was popu ...

shaped canvas Shaped canvases are paintings that depart from the normal flat, rectangular configuration. Canvases may be shaped by altering their outline, while retaining their flatness. An ancient, traditional example is the '' tondo'', a painting on a round p ...

Hard-edge painting Hard-edge painting is painting in which abrupt transitions are found between color areas. Color areas are often of one unvarying color. The Hard-edge painting style is related to Geometric abstraction, Op Art, Post-painterly Abstraction, and C ...

Op Art Op art, short for optical art, is a style of visual art that uses optical illusions. Op artworks are abstract, with many better-known pieces created in black and white. Typically, they give the viewer the impression of movement, hidden images ...

, 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 Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

electronic music Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroac ...

, and

minimal art Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or co ...

Later history

In 1965, the gallery moved to 542 West Broadway, on what is now

LaGuardia Place West Broadway is a north-south street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, separated into two parts by Tribeca Park. The northern part begins at Tribeca Park, near the intersection of Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue), Walker Street a ...

just north of

Houston Street Houston Street ( ) is a major east–west thoroughfare in Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs the full width of the island of Manhattan, from FDR Drive along the East River in the east to the West Side Highway along the Hudson River i ...

adjacent to the neighborhood that is now called,

. By 1965, Paula Cooper served as director, and Park Place became a lightning rod of attention for the downtown art scene. It became a center for the downtown

avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...

as well, with weekly poetry readings, concerts by new electronic composers, and openings that always drew large crowds of young artists. They had attracted funding from the Lannan Foundation.

Closure and legacy

By 1967, the gallery had closed. In the late 1960s and early 1970s in New York City, art shattered into many directions:

Conceptual Art Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called insta ...

Earth Art Land art, variously known as Earth art, environmental art, and Earthworks, is an art movement that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, largely associated with Great Britain and the United StatesArt in the modern era: A guide to styles, schools, & mov ...

Lyrical Abstraction Lyrical abstraction is either of two related but distinct trends in Post-war Modernist painting: ''European Abstraction Lyrique'' born in Paris, the French art critic Jean José Marchand being credited with coining its name in 1947, considered ...

Minimal Art Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or co ...

Postminimalism Postminimalism is an art term coined (as post-minimalism) by Robert Pincus-Witten in 1971Chilvers, Ian and Glaves-Smith, John, ''A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art'', second edition (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. ...

Performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

, and the continuation of

Abstract expressionism Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...

, Color field painting,

and Pop Art. A significant development in the New York art scene was the birth of the gallery scene in SoHo, which Park Place Gallery helped define. After the closure of the gallery, director Paula Cooper took many of the experience she had at the Park Place Gallery and used that to open the Paula Cooper Gallery on 96 Prince Street in SoHo. In September 2008, the

Blanton Museum of Art The Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art (often referred to as the Blanton or the BMA) at the University of Texas at Austin is one of the largest university art museums in the U.S. with 189,340 square feet devoted to temporary exhibitions, permanent coll ...

at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

presented an exhibition entitled: ''Reimagining Space: The Park Place Gallery Group in 1960s New York'' curated by

Linda Dalrymple Henderson Linda Dalrymple Henderson (born 1948) is a historian of art whose research involves the connections between modern art, science and technology, and the occult. She is the David Bruton, Jr. Centennial Professor in Art History at the University of T ...

. The exhibition ran from September 28, 2008 – January 18, 2009.

Artists

Many of the artists that were affiliated with the gallery have been nicknamed, ''The Park Place Group''. The Park Place Gallery had exhibited the works of lesser known young and older artists, often for the first time.

Founders

The Park Place Gallery founders, included:

Exhibitors

The following artists had exhibited work at Park Place Gallery, including:

References

External links

Park Place Gallery artists films, 1967

Archives of American Art The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washingt ...

, Smithsonian Institution
Art and Space: Park Place and the beginning of the Paula Cooper Gallery
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution {{Authority control 1963 establishments in New York City 1968 disestablishments in New York (state) Contemporary art galleries in the United States Cultural history of New York City Artist cooperatives in the United States Defunct art museums and galleries in Manhattan Art galleries established in 1963 Art galleries disestablished in 1968