The Downtown Show: The New York Art Scene, 1974

PUBLIC PROGRAMS

Gallery Talk
Wednesday, January 11, 6:30 pm, Grey Art Gallery, NYU, 100 Washington Square East

With Carlo McCormick, Guest Curator of The Downtown Show and Senior Editor, Paper Magazine; and Lynn Gumpert, Director, Grey Art Gallery.

Raw Television: Grassroots Video Activism in New York City, 1970–1980
Friday, January 27, 4–6 pm, Einstein Auditorium, 34 Stuyvesant Street (at 3rd Ave. and 9th St.)

The political activism of the late 1960s and early ’70s inspired an electronic media revolution. During the mid-1970s, artists and activists pioneered a new community-based TV forum of expression and introduced new ways of making a documentary. Cable TV’s public access stations grew in tandem with video collectives and grassroots organizations. This panel discussion explores the roots and creative influences of this home-grown medium. Speakers include Deirdre Boyle, Senior Core Faculty Member, Media Studies Program, The New School; Jaime Davidovich, Downtown artist; Julie Gustafson, filmmaker and co-director, Global Village; George Stoney, Paulette Goddard Professor in Film, Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film and Television (TSOA). Moderated by Barbara Abrash, Director of Public Programs, Center for Media, Culture and History, and Center for Religion and Media.

Organized by NYU’s Center for Media, Culture and History, and Center for Religion and Media; co-sponsored by NYU-TV, Department of Art & Art Professions (Steinhardt), Fales Library, and Grey Art Gallery. Information: 212/998-7608.

Readings from “The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene, 1974–1984”
Tuesday, February 7, 6:30 pm, The Fales Library, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, Third Floor

To celebrate publication of The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene, 1974–1984, contributors will read selections and discuss the scene. Participants include Eric Bogosian, actor and performer; Bernard Gendron, Professor of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee; RoseLee Goldberg, scholar and director of Performa; Richard Hell, author, actor, and musician; Gracie Mansion, gallerist; Michael Musto, writer and cultural critic; Sur Rodney (Sur), gallerist; and Chi Chi Valenti, fashion designer.

Co-sponsored by NYU’s Fales Library and Grey Art Gallery. Information: 212/998-2596.

The Moving Edge: The Place of Downtown Art in New York City
Thursday, February 16, 6:30 pm, The Fales Library, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, Third Floor

Art of a certain kind happens in places of a certain kind. What was it about Downtown New York in the decade between 1974 and 1984 that gave rise to the creativity of SoHo and the East Village? How did geography and social movements matter? And now that things have gone the other way, what is the legacy of cheap rents, street grit, and all that impertinence? A panel of urban analysts—including several veterans of the Downtown scene—will address these issues and more. Participants include Harvey Molotch, Professor of Sociology and Metropolitan Studies, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis; Laurin Raiken, Chair of Gallatin Interdisciplinary Arts Program; Mitchell Stevens, Associate Professor of Sociology and Education, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences (Steinhardt); and Sharon Zukin, Broeklundian Professor of Sociology, Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center.

Co-sponsored by NYU’s Department of Sociology; Program in Metropolitan Studies, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis; Department of Humanities and Social Science (Steinhardt); Gallatin Interdisciplinary Arts Program; Fales Library; and Grey Art Gallery.
Information: 212/998-6780.

Cuentos de Loisaida: Latinos and the Downtown Scene
Wednesday, February 22, 6:30–8:30 pm
The Fales Library, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, Third Floor

Please note: this program has been CANCELLED.

Downtown: Revisiting the Birthplace of the Artistic Counterculture
Thursday, February 23, 12 pm, Makor/Steinhardt Center of the 92nd Street Y, 35 West 67th Street
(between Columbus Ave. and Central Park West)

Join Marvin J. Taylor, editor of The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene 1974–1984 and Director, Fales Library, and Lynn Gumpert, Director, Grey Art Gallery, and a contributor to the book, for a glimpse into New York’s artistic counterculture. They will discuss the development of their joint Downtown project—which comprises both the book and The Downtown Show—focusing on the scene that shaped a generation of experimental and outsider artists.

Organized by the Makor/Steinhardt Center of the 92nd Street Y. Admission: $16 general, $10 with NYU student i.d.
Information and tickets: 212/601-1000.

No Alternative: New Downtown Art
Thursday, March 2, 6:30 pm, The Fales Library, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, Third Floor

Panelists in this discussion will reflect on the legacy of Downtown art. Performance, punk, feminism, and queer activism are among the current concerns of the young artists and organizers taking part. Examining their own work, speakers will reconsider the relevance of terms like “Downtown” and “alternative.” With JD Samson, Le Tigre, musician and artist; Dean Daderko, curator; Ulrike Müller, LTTR, artist; Jeremy Wade, Chez Bushwick, dancer; John Kelsey, Reena Spaulings Fine Art, artist. Moderated by Matt Wolf; Carlo McCormick, respondent.

Co-sponsored by NYU’s Fales Library and Grey Art Gallery. Information: 212/998-2596.

Creating the Archive: When Experience Becomes History
Tuesday, March 7, 7 pm, Silver Center, Room 300 (enter at 32 Waverly Place)

This forum will explore the process by which lived experience and eyewitness reports are transformed into historical data—in museums, archives, scholarship, and the classroom. With Tavia Nyong’o, Department of Performance Studies (TSOA); Marvin J. Taylor, Director, the Fales Library; and Martha Wilson, Founding Director, Franklin Furnace Archive Inc. Moderated by Shelley Rice, Department of Photography and Imaging (TSOA) and Department of Fine Arts. Third in a series of panels about the changing role and nature of The Archive in contemporary life.

Co-sponsored by NYU’s Department of Photography and Imaging (TSOA), Department of Fine Arts, Fales Library, and Grey Art Gallery.
Information: 212/998-6780.

Off the Beaten Path: Archiving the Creative Process in Late-20th-Century Art
Thursday, March 23, 6:30 pm, The Fales Library, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, Third Floor

In the 2006 Fales Lecture, John Hanhardt, Senior Curator of Film and Media Arts, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, will examine the powerful roles played by artists’ archives in recovering and representing developments in late-20th-century film and video art.

Co-sponsored by NYU’s Fales Library, Department of English, and Grey Art Gallery. Information: 212/998-2596.

Nightclubbing—Greatest Hits, 1975–1980
Friday, March 31, 6 pm (doors open at 5:45), Cantor Film Center, 36 East Eighth Street, Room 200

Media artists Pat Ivers and Emily Armstrong will screen and discuss selections from their cable-TV show, Nightclubbing, which aired from 1975 to 1980. Greatest Hits includes performances by Downtown icons Blondie, Talking Heads, the Heartbreakers with Richard Hell, the Dead Boys, the Lounge Lizards, the Dead Kennedys, the Stillettos with Tish and Snooky, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, DNA, Iggy Pop, the Cramps, and John Cale, among many others, videotaped on location in such renowned venues as the Mudd Club, CBGB’s, Hurrah’s, and Danceteria. Followed by a conversation with Amos Poe, pioneering No Wave filmmaker and faculty member, Department of Film & Television (TSOA).

Co-sponsored by NYU’s The Directors Series, Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film & Television (TSOA); NYU-TV; Fales Library; and Grey Art Gallery. Information: www.nyu.edu/nyutv.