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October 31, 2024
Art Ephemera & Art History: For Collectors and Researchers

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.

October 24, 2024
Collaborative Projects Inc (aka Colab): A 1980s Artist Group and The Rise of Cultural Activism

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…

October 17, 2024
What is an “A More Store?” – Artists Take Control of Their Own Marketing, 1980-1983

“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…

October 10, 2024
Early Keith Haring Ephemera: Xerox – Book – Poster – Sticker

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.

October 3, 2024
Back in Stock – East Village Eye: The Hip Hop Issues and Other Rarities

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.

September 26, 2024
Four Galleries of the 1980s: Fun Gallery – Semaphore – 303 – International With Monument

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.

September 19, 2024
ABC No Rio Dinero: Ephemera from the Gallery’s First Five Years

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…

September 12, 2024
What a Year: The 1982/83 Art Season – ART/new york: A Video Magazine on Art

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…

September 5, 2024
Art Science Technology: Art Ephemera From Our Inventory

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…

August 29, 2024
Food for Thought: Art Ephemera That Gets You Thinking

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.

August 22, 2024
Amos Poe’s No Wave Film The Foreigner, Photos by Fernando Natalici, 1978

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.

August 16, 2024
New York Nightclubs 1980s: Art, Nightlife and Club Ephemera

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…

August 8, 2024
Curt Hoppe’s Downtown Portraits at Howl! Happening: Last Chance – Closing this Sunday, August 11

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.

August 1, 2024
Miracle on Rivington Street: Groundbreaking Heralds a New Building for a Historic Art Space

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…

July 25, 2024
“I Can’t Imagine Ever Wanting To Be White”

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…

July 19, 2024
Politics Politics Politics: Art Ephemera From Our Inventory

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…

July 10, 2024
Curt Hoppe — Downtown Portraits Revisited: Opening Thursday July 11

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,…

July 4, 2024
Beauty – Worldly Pleasures – Time – Death: R.I.P. Audrey Flack (1931 – 2024)

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

June 27, 2024
The Origins of Gallery 98: Marc H. Miller and 98 Bowery

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,…

June 20, 2024
Art Publications Worthy of Note: Ellsworth Kelly, Max’s Kansas City, Remembering 9/11

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…

June 13, 2024
Lyle Ashton Harris: The 1990s Roots of Today’s Social Discourse

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…

June 6, 2024
THE 1982 – 1983 ART SEASON ART/new york: A Video Magazine on Art

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…

May 30, 2024
A Book About Colab (And Related Activities)

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…

May 23, 2024
Who is Sam Wagstaff?: Anne MacDonald, Sam Wagstaff, Robert Mapplethorpe

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…

May 16, 2024
Visit Our New Online Exhibition: Anne MacDonald, Sam Wagstaff, Robert Mapplethorpe

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…

May 9, 2024
No Cameras Allowed: Let’s Talk About Courtroom Illustration

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.

May 2, 2024
Anne MacDonald & Shift Magazine: Mapplethorpe, Acker, Wojnarowicz

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. …

April 25, 2024
Roger de Montebello (1908 – 1996): An Artist’s Obsessive Quest for 3-D Photography

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.

April 16, 2024
Sunday, April 21, 2:30pm: Selling Polaroids in the Bars of Amsterdam, 1980

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.

April 15, 2024
Sensation: Controversy at the Brooklyn Museum, 1999

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…

April 5, 2024
Vintage Art Posters: John Baldessari, Lawrence Weiner, Felix Gonzalez-Torres.

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…

April 1, 2024
Exhibitions in Context: Gallery Cards with Press Releases and Price Lists

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…

March 21, 2024
Gallery Cards, Posters, Other Art Ephemera

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.

March 14, 2024
Richard Prince: Books, Catalogues and Gallery Cards

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,…

March 7, 2024
Downtown Independent Films: Posters and Flyers, 1970s & 1980s

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…

February 29, 2024
Stefan Eins: Crowbar and Pulley, 1974 – Two Ready-Made Art Objects Inspired by Wonder

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…

February 22, 2024
Portraits of Artists: Gagosian Invitation Cards, 1992 – 1993

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.

February 15, 2024
Luxury Art Ephemera: Gagosian – Beverly Hills, New York, London, Rome

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.

February 9, 2024
The Blues Aesthetic (1989): Looking Deeper at African American Art

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.

February 1, 2024
The ARTIES: Awards for Performance Artists, 1986

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.

January 27, 2024
The Rise of Alternative Spaces in the 1970s and 1980s

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…

January 19, 2024
Who Are Your Favorite Artists? Ephemera Sorted by Artist

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…

January 12, 2024
Search Our Inventory By Themes: Over 7,000 Art Ephemera Items Now Online

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.

January 4, 2024
William Pope.L’s Unknown History

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

January 2, 2024
The Theoretical Girls: Women Artists of The Pictures Generation

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…

December 21, 2023
Looking Back at The Year in Review: Favorite Newsletters in 2023

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…

December 15, 2023
Holiday Ideas: Faith Ringgold, Philip Glass, Keith Haring, others

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.

December 7, 2023
Last Call Before Christmas: Selling Polaroids in the Bars of Amsterdam, 1980

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…