Texas Gallery
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 Hunter. For NY-centric art aficionados like us, the cards are an important reminder of the key role that the city of Houston played in the rise of challenging new art in the 1970s and 80s.
Houston’s embrace of art can be credited in part to John and Dominique de Menil, who were not only voracious collectors, but also the force behind Rice University’s Institute for the Arts, the Rice Media Center, the Rothko Chapel, as well as their own museum The Menil Collection. Big name contemporary artists were soon visiting Houston and the taste for innovative new art quickly spread amongst other wealthy Texans. Consequently, the 1970s saw a major expansion of Houston’s Contemporary Arts Museum, as well as the opening of a number of galleries specializing in contemporary art. The Texas Gallery (originally founded as Contract Graphics in 1971), was perhaps the most significant of these galleries. It is still active today.
Texas-born Fredericka Hunter studied art history with Dominque de Menil in Houston before continuing her studies on the East Coast. Joining Contract Graphics, she helped transform it from a mere prints gallery to its rebranding as the Texas Gallery. A frequent visitor to New York, Hunter followed all the trends and consulted at first with innovative dealers like Klaus Kertess at Bykert Gallery. She also took an interest in California art after working with Ed Ruscha who introduced her to many of his friends.
From the Collection
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• Cindy Sherman
• James Welling
• Metro Pictures
• Richard Prince
• Robert Longo
• Texas Gallery
• Walter Robinson
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No Wave and Independent Film
CollectionsThe No Wave and Independent films produced in downtown New York in the 1970s and 1980s are an intriguing hybrid art form that intermingles music, fashion, performance and visual art. -
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Christy Rupp: Rats and Other Early Works, 1979–1983
CollectionsChristy Rupp achieved early fame with her art when a street poster she created became the focus of widespread media attention in 1979 during a contentious, three-week strike by NYC sanitation workers. -
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Mary Boone Gallery:A History in Art Ephemera
CollectionsMary Boone’s decision to close her galleries as she gets ready to begin serving a 30-month jail sentence for tax evasion, brings to a halt the storied reign of one of New York’s most public and successful dealers. -
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Colette: On the Streets and in the Clubs, 1972–1985
CollectionsColette worked without inhibition. Acting out an inner-world of fantasies she began making photographic self-portraits, creating soft fabric environments in which she was often a crucial living presence, and exhibiting self-referential hybrid works that combined sculpture, painting, and photography. -
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Cara Perlman: Finger-Paint Portraits, Tin Pan Alley, 1981–82
CollectionsPerlman’s portraits, executed with a painting method typically used by children, fit broadly into the 1980s wave of neo-expressionism but they go way beyond that context. -
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12 Christmas Gifts From Dianne B, Postcard Set 1983, Peter Hujar
CollectionsA recent visit to the Peter Hujar retrospective “Speed of Life” at the Morgan Library and Museum brought to mind a fashion ephemera item in the Gallery 98 collection. The Twelve Perfect Christmas Gifts from Dianne B. (1983) is a mini-portfolio consisting of a decorated cover and twelve postcards, eight… -
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Letters and Ephemera: Anne MacDonald, Sam Wagstaff, Robert Mapplethorpe
CollectionsThe connection between Anne MacDonald (1942 – 2018) and Sam Wagstaff (1921 – 1987) dates back to the early 1970s when she was on the Board of Trustees at the Detroit Institute of Art where he was a curator. Despite her title, MacDonald was still in her 20s and… -
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The Night Time Is The Right Time: N.Y.C. Nightclub Ephemera, 1980s
CollectionsBy the 1980s dozens of new nightclubs and bars including Area, Danceteria, Mudd Club, and Paradise Garage consciously strove to be part of the art world by presenting new music, art, film, video, fashion, and performance. -
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BLADE, King of Graffiti: Cards, Photographs, Drawings, Publications
CollectionsIn the words of curator Roger Gastman, “Before New York City made graffiti world famous, BLADE was one of the people who made it famous in New York.” BLADE (Steven Ogburn) was only fifteen years old when in 1972 he tagged his first train. By 1974 he was painting full… -
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Marlene Dumas: Fifty Years of Art Ephemera
CollectionsMarlene Dumas will be adding to her remarkable forty-year career that includes scores of exhibitions at top galleries and museums. A valuable byproduct of this exhibition history is a large cache of gallery cards, brochures, posters and other promotional materials. -
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Keith Haring Ephemera, 1979–1990
CollectionsFor Keith Haring the line separating fine art and ephemera was thin. His meteoritic career was marked by an unrelenting succession of works cutting across every medium and category of art, but his approach to making art was remarkably consistent whether he was making a large outdoor mural, a commercial… -
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The Anomalous Baird Jones (1955–2008)
CollectionsFew people personify the free-wheeling, polymorphous spirit of fin-de-siècle downtown New York as well as the idiosyncratic curator, club party promoter, photographer, author, and celebrity gossip Baird Jones.
