Kiki Smith, Xerox Color Flyer, Tin Pan Alley, 1983
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Tin Pan Alley, Kiki Smith, Xerox Color Flyer, 1983
Size: 8.5 x 11 inches
Gallery 98 has a special connection to the artist group Collaborative Projects Inc. (COLAB). Old announcement cards, flyers and early multiples by artists connected to the group make up a significant part of our inventory.
Kiki Smith was an early COLAB member, a leading participant in many of the group’s most memorable activities in the 1980s, including the Times Square Show, the A More Stores, and exhibitions at the COLAB affiliated art space ABC No Rio.
One of the most successful parts of the Times Square Show was the artist- run gift shop featuring low priced multiples. COLAB repeated this format downtown in Soho just a few months later for Christmas. Kiki Smith was one of the principle organizers of this first A More Store on Broome Street. She also contributed a number of multiples including satirical cigarette packs made out of painted blocks of wood. During the first half of the 1980s the A More Stores became a holiday tradition; many of the artist-made items sold there are available at Gallery 98.
The color Xerox flyer by Smith below advertises a 1983 party at Tin Pan Alley, a basement bar on 49th Street that became an artists’ hangout when COLAB organized the Times Square Show in a former massage parlor nearby. The bar encouraged the influx of artists by hosting exhibitions and hiring some as staff. Kiki Smith was the Tin Pan Alley cook and Nan Goldin was a bartender. Gallery 98 has previously spotlighted Tin Pan Alley’s unusual art story with an online exhibition of finger-paint portraits created there by COLAB artist Cara Perlman.
