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40 Top Art Events of the Downtown Era: A Timeline, 1974–1992

The Downtown Era began in the 1970s, when aspiring artists of the baby-boomer generation arrived in New York. Over the next two decades, they would radically change the art world, opening it up to new forms of media, new modes of exhibiting art, and new social perspectives.

Joseph Beuys, Invitation, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, 1974

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Offset print, 5 1/4″ x 4 1/4″.

The German conceptualist was little-known in America before January 1974, when (at the invitation of gallerist Ronald Feldman) he commenced the lecture tour “Energy Plan for the Western Man,” expounding his conception of art’s capacity to transform society. Beuys returned to the U.S. later that year to perform the piece “I Like America and America Likes Me” at the René Block Gallery.