The New York Gallery History Project Launches First Installment with Jay Gorney Modern Art

Independent and the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Contemporary Art Library are pleased to announce the launch of the first installment of The New York Gallery History Project. Supported through the partnership's fundraising efforts, this free initiative gives open and searchable access to an online archive of important New York City exhibitions by key galleries and artist-run spaces that are no longer in operation, from the 1980s to today. The first installment presents the archive of Jay Gorney Modern Art and includes over 90 exhibitions that took place from 1985 until its closure in 1998, making images of these significant shows accessible for the first time.

Jay Gorney Modern Art was chosen as the inaugural archive for the project due to its pivotal role during the rise of the East Village scene of the 1980s, before its move to nearby SoHo in 1987. The gallery was linked to the Pictures Generation artists, who came of age in 1970s America and were known for their critical analysis of media culture, with the gallery working closely with Barbara Bloom, Sarah Charlesworth, and James Welling. Jay Gorney Modern Art was also known for showing challenging neo-Conceptual work as well as introducing many artists who have gone on to global recognition, including Alexis Rockman, Catherine Opie, Jessica Stockholder, and Gillian Wearing. Highlights from the archive include a 1995 three-person show of Eadweard Muybridge, Michael Snow, and Haim Steinbach; a 1989 solo exhibition of Roni Horn; and a show of works by Nan Goldin and Tim Rollins + K.O.S. in 1986 in which Goldin showed some of the first printed images of her now seminal photographic series The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1985).

“Today, as we see attempts to rewrite history, it becomes more important than ever that the truth is preserved. As artists fall out of favor or, conversely, as artists become major figures, there can be attempts to spin the way their work is understood or seen. An archive like this is an attempt to safeguard history, and to introduce artists and works to a new generation who may not know them,” says Jay Gorney. “The full story of my gallery would have been lost if it weren’t for this invaluable project. Piecing the exhibition history back together has reignited old conversations and friendships from my time running the gallery and I already know of researchers who plan to use the archive for forthcoming scholarship. I hope that people will enjoy the images and also that they will contribute any material that they may have to fill in the few remaining gaps.”

For the past year, archive material from the gallery—which predates the widespread use of digital communications and photography—has been organized, digitized, and documented by the archivist Camille Brown in close collaboration with Jay Gorney. Additional research from other sources was undertaken to fill in the gaps left by missing materials that were lost during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, further highlighting the importance of The New York Gallery History Project in saving such sources for posterity. Analog prints, color transparencies and slides of artworks and installs, along with exhibition invitations, have been organized into an almost intact gallery history and are now available to view on the Contemporary Art Library website.

“I am so grateful to Jay and Independent for making this dream of ours come true. I hope this release will model a new approach to organizing and preserving art's recent history,” says Forrest Arakawa-Nash, Executive Director of Contemporary Art Library. 

Orchard and Queer Thoughts Announced as Next Installments

The New York Gallery History Project is pleased to additionally announce that the next grants will go to preserving the exhibition histories of the galleries Orchard and Queer Thoughts. Orchard was an exhibition and event space on the Lower East Side run between 2005-08 by a cooperative of 12 artists and creatives. The gallery’s diverse program focused on thematically, conceptually, and politically driven group exhibitions and was known for bringing together established and lesser known artists across generations, including Michael Asher, Hans Haacke, and Josiah McElheny. Queer Thoughts was an experimental gallery founded by artists Miguel Bendaña and Sam Lipp, which began in Chicago in 2012 before moving to Tribeca in 2015 and finally closing in 2023. Over its 11 years, the gallery became known for showing conceptual work, bringing to prominence artists such as David Rappeneau, Diamond Stingily, and Puppies Puppies (Jade Kuriki-Olivo).

“The legacies of Orchard and Queer Thoughts demand to be preserved. Orchard represents the spark that can happen when the best and brightest conceptual artists and theorists unite to form a collective new gallery model. Queer Thoughts brought a fresh and invigorating artists' perspective to emerging art at a time when the thinking was that galleries must professionalize to succeed in New York. We are honored to sponsor the preservation of both gallery histories,” states Elizabeth Dee, Founder of Independent.

The nonprofit New York Gallery History Project is a multi-year partnership that aims to provide an essential service to curators, current gallery practitioners and art historians. It is made possible through generous donations—those interested in supporting the initiative can do so via the Contemporary Art Library website.

About The New York Gallery History Project
Contemporary Art Library, in partnership with Independent, gathers, organizes, digitizes, preserves and makes accessible a trove of important documentation from seminal art spaces in recent New York art history, spanning from the mid-1980s to present. Recognizing the precarity of these histories and the risk of them fading into obscurity, the partnership ensures that documentation from these art spaces lives on within Contemporary Art Library, the preeminent archive of contemporary art documentation. It aims to widen access to the history of contemporary art in New York for scholars, researchers, and the public alike.

About Independent 
Independent is a mission-driven organization that serves collectors, galleries, artists, arts writers and institutions internationally. Originally established in 2010 as a critically acclaimed art fair at the former Dia Center for the Arts, Independent has expanded to two leading art shows in New York for contemporary and modern art, incorporating two landmark shows (Independent and Independent 20th Century), and leads publications, scholarship, and a public program of research-based initiatives.

About Contemporary Art Library
Launched in 2021, Contemporary Art Library is already the largest online database of contemporary art documentation in the world, free and open to all. Combining 15 years of material published on Contemporary Art Daily with comprehensive histories from more than 80 Founding Partners and a growing list of closed spaces, the Library has quickly become the definitive resource for learning about the work of contemporary artists, used more than seven million times in 2023 by people around the world. By providing access to current knowledge of contemporary art, we’re changing the art world to be more open, more inclusive, and therefore more diverse, which in turn makes art richer and stronger.

For more information and to request a press kit: please contact press@independenthq.com