There is still time to bid on items in the Washington Project for the Arts’ Benefit Auction on Artsy, ending on Thursday, August 13th at 6:30 PM. Of special interest are two unusual forays into portraiture by artists who participated in the WPA’s infamous Punk Art Exhibition (1978).

Neke Carson’s John Waters Closet Portrait must be one of the more unusual works in the Washington Project for the Arts’ Benefit Auction that is now open for online bidding at Artsy through August 13. Carson, a pioneering performance artist with links to Fluxus and Neo-Dada, is a true original who over his 50-year career has produced…

The benefit auction for the Washington Project for the Arts (already canceled twice because of Covid-19!!) will finally be open for online bidding at 6:30 pm today (Thursday July 30th) at Artsy. In celebration of the WPA’s 45th Anniversary, the auction features many of the artists who over the years exhibited at this important venue for contemporary art…

Artists in the 1980s had a lot to say but not necessarily with a work hanging on a wall. The downtown art space Franklin Furnace (founded by Martha Wilson in 1976) was one of the first galleries to recognize this reality with programming centered around performance art, artists books and other new formats.

For those who were part of the New York art world in the 1980s and attended the exhibitions and events featured on the art ephemera sold by Gallery 98, these mementos preserve not only art history but also personal memories.

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.

Artist/documentarian Clayton Patterson’s recent article in the Village Sun adds a new perspective to some Keith Haring announcement cards in the collection of Gallery 98. Patterson has been a longtime advocate of artist Angel Ortiz (better known as LA2) who worked with Haring in the early 1980s but who is now increasingly excluded from the Haring story.

Some of the most desirable gallery announcement cards are those with a portrait of the featured artist. In this regard Franklin Furnaces’ Food for Thought card is an exceptional example of art ephemera because it displays two high profile artists, one on each side of the card.

Art ephemera – the advertising and promotional material created by galleries to publicize and sell art – is now a coveted collectible onto itself.  Collecting ephemera is a way to own vintage objects connected to famous artists, and at the same time, learn more about the history of art as it actually…

Dramatically sited amidst the ruins of Charlotte Street in the South Bronx, John Fekner’s 1980 murals –DECAY and BROKEN PROMISES — are the best known work of this early street artist noted for his use of stencils for a political purpose.

For those nostalgic for that still memorable fin-de-siècle moment in downtown New York when art, nightlife, fashion, politics and decadence mingled and thrived, the more than 5,000 items of paper ephemera from the 1970s – 90s posted online at Gallery 98 might be the perfect remedy.

Details Magazine, founded by Annie Flanders in 1982, is best known for its fashion coverage. Starting with the very first issue the magazine was brimming with creatively designed ads from small downtown boutiques and newly launched clothing lines.

Since going into lockdown six weeks ago Gallery 98 has been busy unpacking and sorting through thirty-three massive boxes containing the library of art critic Edit deAk (1948-2017).   Most of the boxes contained art books and gallery catalogues but about a quarter of them were filled with art magazines from all…

Gallery 98 has received and organized 33 boxes of art critic Edit deAk’s library, and are now selling vintage catalogues, books, and periodicals, in a $50 Lockdown Sale featuring important and rare items.

Gallery 98 offers the press kit from MoMA’s controversial 1984 exhibition, ‘Primitivism’ In 20th Century Art. The kit includes photos, press releases, and critical essays illuminating the exhibition’s cultural bias, a significant event in the discussion around diversity and multiculturalism in the art world.

Gallery 98’s recent acquisition of a large collection of books and ephemera from the library of art critic Edit deAk (1948-2017) brings to light many interesting art world stories.

Among the treasures that Gallery 98 discovered sorting through the boxes of books from the late art critic Edit deAk’s library was this signed offset print portfolio promoting Greer Lankton’s first exhibition at Civilian Warfare Gallery in May 1983.

Before being confined by quarantine, Gallery 98 was fortunate to have acquired the library of the late art critic Edit deAk (1948-2017). Edit Deák was a rebellious artistic teenager living in communist Budapest, Hungary who engineered her escape in the trunk of a car and made her way to New York.

When the Guerrilla Girls began wheat-pasting posters on walls near galleries and museums in downtown NY in the mid-1980s, they didn’t know what effect these posters would have on the art world nor exactly how long that effect would last.

For the last five years Gallery 98 has been marketing art ephemera, continuously posting new items online from our vast inventory of over 60,000 cards and posters. Art ephemera is not just for collectors – items that we have sold remain posted so that art researchers can continue to access the important information that…

Gallery 98’s recent acquisition of a large collection of Night and Details has put the spotlight on our extensive inventory of downtown periodicals from the 1970s and 80s.

Gallery 98 has just added a large bus-stop poster to its online exhibition on fashion photographer Bill Cunningham’s work for DETAILS Magazine from 1982-90.

Perusing Gallery 98’s inventory of thousands of announcement cards, posters and other art ephemera is like a trip through the history of art from the 1960s – 90s. Every art movement, gallery and artist is represented allowing visitors to explore the art that interests them the most.The traditional designation of…

Next month, the Brooklyn Museum will be celebrating New York’s most infamous nightclub of the 1970s with the exhibition Studio 54: Night Magic, from March 13 to July 5. One of the artists featured in the exhibition will be Anton Perich who frequently made photographs at Studio 54 and also published NIGHT, a…

For readers of the weekend style section of The New York Times Bill Cunningham (1929 – 2016) was a perennial favorite particularly appreciated for his weekly picture column On the Street, a sharp-eyed compendium of the fashion he encountered on the street.

The artist Freda L. Reiter may not be a household name, but her work, particularly a series of drawings she completed in the mid-1970s, is widely recognized as an important visual record in the impeachment of President Nixon.

Gallery 98 is on Instagram.  Each day, we post new images from our extensive inventory of announcement cards, posters, flyers, photographs and multiples connected to the downtown New York art world from the 1960’s through 2000.  Gallery 98 is a place for both collectors and researchers.  Follow us on Instagram…

Gallery 98 is on Instagram.  Each day, we post new images from our extensive inventory of announcement cards, posters, flyers, photographs and multiples connected to the downtown New York art world from the 1960’s through 2000.  Gallery 98 is a place for both collectors and researchers.  Follow us on Instagram…

Gallery 98’s online exhibition Watergate Courtroom Sketches by Freda L. Reiter, 1973 – 75 is inspired not only by the current interest in presidential impeachment but also by our ongoing interest in featuring successful woman artists in the fine arts as well as in the commercial art fields, which have often provided…

Freda Reiter’s color pastel recreations of Richard Nixon’s resignation and other Oval Office scenes, as well as, her life sketches of the Watergate trials are the products of an era with very different rules for the media. In the 1970s, news photographers had only limited access to an increasingly reclusive president, and laws…

With the whiff of impeachment once again in the air, Gallery 98 has resurrected its online exhibition Watergate Courtroom Sketches by Freda L. Reiter, 1973 – 75. Back in the 1970s photography was prohibited in courtrooms, so it was up to sketch artists like Freda Reiter (1919-86) to provide the visuals…

One does not usually think of the late 20th century as a great period for women artists, in part because of the Guerilla Girls’ successful poster campaign that revealed how few women exhibited in NYC’s major museums and galleries. Yet a survey of the announcement cards from this period shows…

Artist and curator Marc H Miller will be talking about his life in downtown New York City at Howl! Happening on Saturday, October 19th. The occasion is the unveiling of an updated version of his website 98 Bowery, 1969-89, a picture memoir of the 20 years he lived in a Bowery…

You will rarely, if ever, see a reference to the rock band Jon Waine in bios of William Pope.L, the celebrated artist who this month has simultaneous exhibitions opening at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum. But it was during his six years (1976-83) as the group’s lead singer and co-composer…

Gallery 98’s Marc H Miller is the subject of a long interview by Eric Davidson now featured on PLEASE KILL ME, the popular website that takes its name from a Richard Hell t-shirt made famous by Legs McNeil and Gilliam McCain when they co-opted it as the…

Gallery 98 has recently acquired souvenir clothing items from Keith Haring’s annual Party of Life.  Planned around his May 4th birthday, Haring staged three Party of Life events from 1984 – 86.

Gallery 98 has recently acquired a collection of rare early issues of NIGHT magazine, perhaps the most visually compelling of the many independent publications that emerged in downtown New York in the 1970s and 80s. Founded by artist Anton Perich, NIGHT focused on NYC nightlife capturing an important “post-pop” moment…

Over the years Gallery 98 has handled some of the best examples of Basquiat ephemera. Most of these items have already sold but since we are a research site for art historians, as well as an online gallery for collectors, we often leave sold items posted on the site. …

Similar to the way paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat have played a key role in the frenzy surrounding contemporary high-end art auctions, the same is happening in the more limited market of vintage contemporary art ephemera. The cards, posters and publications that feature Basquiat and chart the important moments in his short…

The rise of downtown New York in the early 70’s as both an artist neighborhood and a gallery district is charted in this online exhibition featuring vintage invitation cards and posters. This carefully curated selection captures the moment pop and minimalism evolved into new forms of conceptual and political art.

The glory days of the East Village in the late 70’s and early 80’s are captured in this selection of vintage invitation cards, posters and other art ephemera. This carefully curated online exhibition includes gallery announcements, nightclub invites, and underground publications. Among those featured are David Wojnarowicz, Madonna, Richard Prince, Lady Pink,…

For this poster, made not long after his diagnosis with AIDS, Haring pasted his own baby picture inside an image of an about-to-burst soap bubble: a frank metaphor for the life that would be cut short barely a year later.

Amongst artist Joseph Beuys’ innovations was the idea of “social sculpture”, a concept that expands the definition of art to include human activity, and considers art’s potential to transform society.

The title of the 1987 exhibition by Julian Schnabel in the poster above may have political resonance today, but it actually comes from The Recognitions, a 1955 novel by William Gaddis about art, forgery, corrupt art critics and spiritual truths.

Glad to hear that Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project has now posted for free online viewing the catalogue for Curt Hoppe’s exhibition Downtown Portraits, 2010 – 2019. The 100-page catalogue includes reproductions of all of Hoppe’s twenty-four painted portraits and the 105 portrait photographs, along with essays by Walter Robinson, Carlo McCormick and…

On Friday, May 17th, there will be a screening at 7pm at Howl! Happening (6 East First St. NYC, 10003) of Walter Robinson: Artist Provocateur (2018), the most recent addition to Paul Tschinkel’s long-running videotape series ART/new york.

Mary Boone’s decision to close her galleries as she awaits her 30-month jail sentence for tax evasion brings to at least a temporary close one of the most public and successful careers in art dealing.

The opening of Curt Hoppe’s two-gallery exhibition of Downtown Portraits last week was a mobbed success. At Howl Happening, which is featuring all 105 photographic portraits, many of Hoppe’s subjects participated in a large group portrait:  A Great Day in Harlem – East Village style! At the Bernarducci Gallery, 22 giant portrait paintings rose…