Fast, the group exhibition at the Alexander Milliken Gallery, from June 11 to July 15, 1982, is now remembered primarily for its inclusion of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s skull painting (Untitled 1982), which later fetched $110,497,500 at a 2017 auction at Sotheby’s and remains the most expensive of all of Basquiat’s works.

People have many reasons to be interested in art ephemera — a type of collectible that also has the advantage of being small, easy to store, and modestly priced. Many collectors follow specific artists, but others just appreciate catchy images that they can casually display on a bookcase or coffee…

For researchers and scholars, Gallery 98 provides free and easy access to hard-to-find, primary documents like gallery announcement cards, posters, catalogues and magazine advertisements.  Collectors of art ephemera will be pleased with the breadth and richness of Gallery 98’s holdings, and the many ways you can search for items.

When the artist group Colab was founded in 1978 it was conceived more as a mutual aid society than as an art movement. Colab can be credited with helping to re-direct artworld priorities towards themes of inclusion and social engagement.  Because many women artists were part of Colab, feminist ideas were…

“A More Stores” (as the COLAB stores were called) became yearly events with sympathetic galleries providing artists with the necessary retail space.  In 1982, the idea went global when COLAB members Stefan Eins and Jenny Holzer set up a Fashion Moda Store at Documenta 7, the international art fair in Germany.  Keith Haring took the idea a…

In addition to making the subway chalk drawings that quickly won him fame, Haring also promoted his artistic vision by handing out xeroxes, buttons, posters and stickers featuring his ever-expanding repertoire of images.

At one point, Gallery 98 had a near complete collection of the East Village Eye. Many of the most popular of these issues are now back in stock. Gallery 98 has recently been able to re-stock some of the rarest and most sought-after issues of the East Village Eye, an independent, D.I.Y.

Gallery 98 spotlights four 1980s galleries with exceptional exhibition records. Of the four, 303 Gallery, which recently celebrated its 35th anniversary, is the only one to have survived the decade. The history of these groundbreaking galleries can be tracked through the art ephemera they produced for each of their exhibitions.

Gallery 98 has always been particularly strong in 1970’s and 80’s art ephemera from downtown NYC.  Featured below are items from ABC No Rio’s first five years. This was the time when the gallery was affiliated with the artist group COLAB, and was central to an evolving art world that put a premium on art connected to social and…

This promotional mailer for Paul Tschinkel’s Art/new york, A Video Magazine on Art is a reminder of how dynamic the contemporary art scene was in the 1980s. The portable video camera was still a novelty and artists were eager to see how they and their art looked on television.  A new generation of…

With the beginning this week of the 2024-2025 art season, one topic sure to be of interest is the connection between art, science and technology. We have here spontaneously selected items from our inventory that show some of the various ways in which art and technology have intermixed. We have…

The items that have been selected for this week’s newsletter all fit into that category: each one highlights a still relevant thought-provoking subject related to art, art world politics, and life.

Rarely screened today, The Foreigner lives on primarily through the excellent on-set photographs taken by Fernando Natalici to publicize the film. Gallery 98 has a number of vintage resin-coated prints made from the original negatives by Natalici in the early 1990s when The Foreigner was first released as a VHS video. All prints are signed and annotated by Natalici.

In the 1980s culture-loving New Yorkers not only attended gallery openings, theater events and movies, but also participated in New York’s flourishing nightclub scene. While music and dancing were the main attraction, clubs also hosted art exhibitions, performances, fashion, film and video. During these years, almost every gallery opening, film…

Hoppe will be at Howl! Happening this Sunday, August 11, at 3 PM, to sign copies of the catalog for Downtown Portraits. Copies of the 100-page catalogue with essays by Marc H Miller, Carlo McCormick, and Walter Robinson, are also available for purchase through the Howl online store.

The groundbreaking at the site of the proposed new ABC No Rio arts center. From the article “How the Anarchists at ABC No Rio Got the City to Build Them an Arts Center on the Lower East Side.” From the online publication Hell Gate (owned and…

Daniel J Martinez, “I Can’t Ever Imagine Wanting To Be White”, Metal Button, Whitney Biennial, 1993. Most of the buttons distributed at the Whitney Museum included only fragments of Martinez’s message. This is one of the rare examples that included the complete phrase. The writing…

These days it’s hard to think about anything besides politics. Here are some items from Gallery 98’s inventory that illustrate the ways in which art ephemera and politics have been linked in the past. Back in the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan was the art world’s bête noir, and many of…

Five years after they were first publicly exhibited, Curt Hoppe’s Downtown Portraits (all painted between 2010 and 2019) feel very different from how they felt before. While this collection of 25 larger-than-life, acrylic on canvas portraits will continue to be perceived by most viewers as a celebration of downtown culture in the 1970s,…

We were sorry to hear last week about the passing of Audrey Flack (1931-2024), one of the pioneers of photorealist painting.

Gallery 98 is now a stand-alone online entity offering a full range of art ephemera from the 1960s through the first years of the 21st Century. However, when the gallery first went online around twelve years ago it was simply a “store” designed to offer objects connected to the website 98 Bowery,…

You’ll find here uncommon rare items from our inventory of vintage art publications. In the 1960s one of the favorite hangouts for NYC artists was the bar and restaurant Max’s Kansas City where owner Mickey Ruskin was famous for trading credit for art. A list of items sold at auction in…

What makes for a collectible gallery announcement card? The key quality is a powerful iconic image by a well-known artist that evokes the concerns of the particular time the exhibition took place. Lyle Ashton Harris’ 1997 invitation card clearly fits the bill with its compelling picture of two sexually ambiguous black youths from his White Face Series. It perfectly…

ART/new york: A Video Magazine on Art, The 1982 – 1983 Art Season, Keith Haring, Nam June Paik, Brice Marden, Lee Krasner, Julian Schnabel, Robert Rauschenberg, 1983. Folded card. Size: 10.5 x 12.25 inches This promotional mailer for Paul Tschinkel’s Art/new york, A…

Anyone studying the art of the late 1970s and 1980s will soon encounter the artist group Collaborative Projects Inc., best known simply as Colab. Established as a not-for-profit corporation in 1978, Colab’s original purpose was to provide artists with direct access to newly available government grants. But the group soon…

At the heart of Gallery 98’s online exhibition of letters and ephemera from the estate of art patron Anne MacDonald (1942 – 2018), is the legendary figure Sam Wagstaff, an early mentor of MacDonald, who later became famous as a collector of photography, and as the lover and supporter of…

Gallery 98 has acquired a collection of letters, gallery cards and books from the estate of Anne MacDonald. All of the items connect to Sam Wagstaff, a collector of photography, and to his partner, Robert Mapplethorpe. Objects from this collection (along with a few from our inventory) are now featured in the…

It appears that the art of courtroom illustration may have declined since its high point in the early 1970s when the Watergate trials were must-see television, and cameras were universally prohibited in America’s courthouses.

Anne MacDonald was an enthusiastic promoter of experimental artists advancing new forms of art-making and innovative ways to expand art audiences. This newsletter focuses on her magazine Shift, that published 15 issues from 1987 to 1993. …

We are reposting this newsletter in response to the success of our short video (posted below) about Roger de Montebello, which recently was viewed 120,000 times and received 17,000 likes on TikTok.

THIS COMING SUNDAY, April 21st at 2:30pm. Meet Gallery 98’s Marc H Miller at NYU Bobst Library, where he will be presenting a book featuring the photographs that he and Bettie Ringma took in Amsterdam, 1980. The editor of the book, Leonor Faber-Jonker, will also be participating.

From our newsletter archives — Originally published April 1, 2021. New York Post, “Dung Ho! Retired teacher defaces infamous painting”, Newspaper, Friday December 17, 1999. Dennis Heiner, a retired school teacher, defaced Chris Ofili’s painting, The Holy Virgin Mary, part of the Sensation exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. Ofili’s painting combined elephant dung…

Posters inexpensively printed on offset presses have always been popular with art enthusiasts. Most of these posters were created by galleries and museums to advertise exhibitions. Some, on the other hand, were designed specifically to be sold in museum shops and poster stores as an affordable alternative to signed…

Collectors of art ephemera usually favor cards connected to their favorite artists or to themes of special interest. Displayed on a shelf, or hanging on a wall in a small frame, vintage cards and flyers can either evoke past memories or present interests. Some cards might also have historic value…

One of the easiest ways to sort through the 7,312 items currently listed on the Gallery 98 website is to go to our Artists Page. Here hundreds of artists are listed alphabetically with links that will take you to pages showing all our holdings related to that particular artist.

While few of these films were commercial successes, they provide a glimpse of the passions that fueled the East Village art scene during a creative highpoint. These low-budget, Super-8 productions embody the period’s do-it-yourself ethos, as well as, the fusion of art, music and club culture that animated the downtown…

Gallery 98 is fortunate to have recently acquired a substantial collection of catalogues and books by Richard Prince. Below you will find a small selection of these publications, as well as some of Prince’s gallery cards that were already in our inventory.  What emerges is a mini-portrait of Prince, one of the most innovative,…

Born and raised in Austria, Eins came to NYC in 1967, and settled into a small storefront in Soho in 1972 when it was still a deserted manufacturing district.  When art galleries began moving into the area, Eins hid his bed behind a screen, and turned his live-in studio into a D.I.Y. exhibition…

The cards featured here date from the early 1990s when Gagosian mostly exhibited older established male artists. They all include images of artists in their studios, emphasizing their fame, and the drama and romance of art making.

The dramatic expansion of art as an upscale commodity in the 2000s is directly reflected in art ephemera. Leading the trend was the Gagosian Gallery whose multiple venues in the US and Europe exhibited some of the most commercially successful artists.

As we searched our inventory for something special for Black History Month, the catalogue for Richard Powell’s 1989 exhibition “The Blues Aesthetic: Black Culture and Modernism” provided the necessary inspiration. Gallery 98 has assembled a collection of related ephemera.

The First (And Only) Annual Arties, 1986. Organized by Franklin Furnace, Awards for Performance Artists, Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Nam June Paik, and others, Cover Photo by Robert Mapplethorpe.

The rapid growth of the city’s non-profit art spaces was rooted in a shortage of galleries and other exhibition venues. But there was also an emerging political awareness that some groups were being systematically excluded from mainstream art. Fortuitously, newly available government funding for the arts happily coincided with a…

Every art announcement card is unique.  Each promotes a specific exhibition taking place at a particular place and time. An important decision is made about which image to include: A work in the exhibition? A detail of a work? Or maybe a portrait of the artist? The fun of collecting these cards lies in…

There are many reasons to be interested in art ephemera — a type of collectible that has the advantage of being small, easy to store, and modestly priced. Many collectors follow specific artists, while others appreciate catchy images that they can casually display on a bookcase or coffee tape.

Remembering performance artist William Pope.L (1955 – 2023) who passed last week at the age of 68.

The 1988 announcement card from a Metro Pictures exhibition featuring eleven successful women artists illustrates the gender diversification that was slowly taking hold in the art world in the 1980s. This demographic shift was especially noticeable amongst the artists associated with the then still unnamed “Pictures Generation” art movement which…

See all of Gallery 98’s newsletters on our Newsletter Archive page A lot has happened at Gallery 98 over the last year. Most significantly, we have introduced a redesigned website that not only looks and functions better, but also includes a cart that makes purchasing…

There are many reasons to treasure art ephemera. It can be an item of art historical significance; maybe it’s an announcement card for a favorite artist; or perhaps it touches on a theme that’s personally important to you. All of Gallery 98’s holiday suggestions fall into one or more of these categories.

Selling Polaroids is a picture book for many audiences. Drinkers and dive-bar aficionados will certainly be pleased. But it is also for fans of Amsterdam and the libertine spirit that the city continues to embody today.  Mostly though, it is a book celebrating the freewheeling lifestyle that artists enjoyed in the late 1970s and early 80s, a…

Alice Denney enjoyed nothing more than causing a ruckus by exhibiting challenging new art in “boring old  Washington.” We first met in 1974 when I moved to Washington for a year, and art-world acquaintances suggested I contact her. Alice loved action — giving parties, collecting art by young artists, and…

Last week’s opening of the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines (closing March 31, 2024) is a reminder of the important role that the photocopy machine played in the creation of new modes of art and art ephemera. While the technology used in copy machines dates back to…

This week’s newsletter features an eclectic group of items. The artists created in a range of styles — expressionism, pop, no wave, cartoon satire, and photo journalism. There is also a wide range in what we identify as art ephemera, including familiar formats like announcement cards and press releases, as well as artist books, artist-designed advertisements, an…

Thanks in part to our new high-visibility website, Gallery 98 is increasingly being approached by artists and galleries who want their history to be part of our ever-expanding collection of art ephemera. Recently, we were fortunate to obtain a large collection of announcement cards from the Texas Gallery, courtesy of its principal owner Fredericka…

There is no shortage of treasures buried in Gallery 98’s extensive inventory of close to 7,000 items.  Each one of these four items captures a different moment and direction in art. All have stories to tell. Richard Lippold, Sculpture for Four Seasons Restaurant, Signed Card, 1961 Richard Lippold, The Four Seasons,…

Whether you’re interested in a specific artist, an art movement like graffiti, or how art reflects political and social issues, you can quickly find what you are looking for on Gallery 98’s swift new website. Our inventory of art ephemera keeps growing — currently there are 6,961 items posted, and we…

Gallery 98 is fortunate to have recently acquired a collection of early Jenny Holzer items from 1979-82, a fertile period when Holzer first developed important aspects of her art. These were also the years when Holzer was an active participant in Collaborative Projects Inc. (COLAB), an artist’s group, that like Holzer, shared an interest in…

For those interested in the history of art, the cards, posters and catalogs created in conjunction with past exhibitions provide a way to relive the art experience as it originally unfolded. These vintage collectibles not only provide documentation of specific art-world events, they also contextualize art in the social and commercial structure that gives art its fullest…

New York’s nightclub scene in the 1970s and 1980s is legendary today for its creativity, as well, its hedonism and debauchery. Studio 54 (1977), the Mudd Club (1978), Club 57 (1979), Danceteria (1979), and the Limelight (1983) were the early clubs that set the tone. AREA opened in September 1983 and was part of a second wave, yet…

Jean-Michel Basquiat and AREA owner Eric Goode from the book Area: 1983–1987 authored by Eric Goode & Jennifer Goode, photograph by Valerie Shaff, published by Abrams, 2013 For the talented and prolific Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1985 shaped up to be a banner year. In February, his portrait was on the cover of The…

Every example of art ephemera tells a story, and sometimes, when two items connect, the story can get very interesting. That’s certainly the case with two items currently in Gallery 98’s inventory:  a poster featuring a photo of Richard Serra’s public sculpture TWU (the initials for the Transit Workers Union), and a copy of Franklin Furnaces’ magazine Flue with…

When Stefan Eins opened the art space Fashion Moda in the South Bronx in 1978, he hoped that the unlikely setting, one of the country’s most devastated neighborhoods, would stir the creativity of his Downtown peers.

During its ten-year run as a gallery from 1986–1995, Psychedelic Solution provided a populist alternative to art styles found in other galleries. It specialized in works by Rick Griffin, Robert Williams, Robert Crumb and the many other accomplished artists who can be credited with pioneering what is now known as psychedelic…

Expanding our inventory of vintage posters by top artists from the last decades of the 20th Century is an ongoing process here at Gallery 98. We are currently photographing and processing a large collection of posters. As a taste of what is to come, here are three favorites. Each is…

For several years, Gallery 98 has been puzzled by a piece of mail art in our inventory, originally sent to the offices of Artforum in 1974. The piece consists of the front page of the LA Times of February 28, 1974, with a lead story on Tony Shafrazi’s vandalism of Pablo Picasso’s…

Some art ephemera ages especially well. One example is this vintage 1980 poster for “Dubbed in Glamour” advertising three nights of performances at the Kitchen in Soho.

In 1982 the idea of the DIY artist store went mainstream when the upscale German exhibition documenta 7 asked Stefan Eins & Jenny Holzer to create a Fashion Moda Store.

Gallery 98 showcases selected issues of Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) magazine from the 1990s, featuring cover designs and picture spreads created by artists Jenny Holzer, Jeff Koons, and Richard Prince.

Highlights include a rare collection of collaborative posters from COLAB’s Talk is Cheap exhibition and Lady Pink’s poster from Your House is Mine. Visit Gallery 98’s Poster Page for additional items.

In honor of Women’s History Month, Gallery 98 showcases six women artists who have overcome the odds and risen to the top of the art world.

This collection of art ephemera showcases Duchamp’s influence on artists such as Mike Bidlo, Hannah Wilke, Elaine Sturtevant, and others.