“East Village galleries are multiplying like white rats,” wrote Carlo McCormick in the East Village Eye in October 1983.
“What was once a small handful of peculiarly out-of-place storefronts that even this rag ignored is now an ever-increasing network of more credible and slicker galleries being written about by the likes of the Voice, the N. Y. Times, Art News, Arts Magazine, and Art in America plus a host of Japanese and European magazines that always seem to know what’s going on here before we do.”
While the 1980s East Village art scene went bust before it could live up to the promise laid out in the article, this accompanying map gives a small sense of the neighborhood 31 years ago.
Another East Village Eye guide from 1985 runs down the club scene and bars where you’d be drinking if you lived there in the Reagan era.
Hmm, how many of these addresses are now fro-yo shops or bank branches?
Tags: Art Galleries New York City, Downtown art scene 1980s, East Village 1980s, East Village art galleries 1980s, East Village art scene, East Village Eye, East Village vintage map, old map 1980s New York City
July 21, 2014 at 1:39 am |
I exhibited in many of those galleries back in the day!
July 21, 2014 at 1:01 pm |
There were so many more!
July 31, 2014 at 4:04 am |
and so did I http://www.daylight.co/editions/DD1316
July 31, 2014 at 4:09 am |
I remember that article. Carlo was the 1st reviewer of my work back in the day.