In the eight years since Marc H. Miller started the website 98 Bowery, more than half-a-million people have explored its pages. The site charts the art and music scene in downtown New York from 1969 through 1989, as experienced by Miller from the top floor loft at the address of the title. Half history and half autobiography, it’s divided into six roughly chronological chapters: First Years, 1969-72; Conceptual Artist, 1972-76; Punk Years, 1976-79; Idyll in Holland, 1979-81; Return to the Bowery, 1981-85; and Moving On, 1985-89.
The site features digitizations of Miller’s own artwork (including collaborations at CBGB with Bettie Ringma and Curt Hoppe), publications (the 1985 book ABC No Rio: The Story of a Lower East Side Art Gallery, with Alan Moore), videos (e.g., Miller’s interview with Jean-Michel Basquiat from Paul Tschinkel’s seriesArt/New York), and much more.
Four years after 98 Bowery launched, Gallery 98 was established as its commercial counterpart, making art and ephemera from the period available to collectors. The online gallery has hosted numerous online exhibitions, including “Keith Haring Ephemera, 1979–1990,” “Guerrilla Girls: Feminist Street Posters, 1985–1991,” “Colette: On the Streets and in the Clubs, 1972–1985,” “Collecting COLAB: Ephemera, Photography & Multiples, 1978–1985,” and “Tom Otterness, The Zodiac Love Series, 1982-87.” Its current exhibition is “The Anomalous Baird Jones (1955–2008).”
As a writer for Hyperallergic noted in 2014, Miller “has emerged with his website 98 Bowery and online gallery Gallery 98 as one of the main supporters of 1970s art.”