Historic Site Name: Gracie Mansion Gallery (1982-1991)

Addresses:

March 1983-1984: 337 East 10th Street, New York, NY 10009

November 1984-1987: 167 Avenue A, New York, NY 10009

Gracie Mansion was one of the pivotal galleries in the East Village during its artistic heyday from 1982-1986. Like its sister gallery, (and many say rival) Civilian Warfare Studio, Gracie Mansion promoted and exhibited politically motivated art by queer and female artists such as David Worjanrowicz, Timothy Greathouse, Luis Frangella, Greer Lankton, Kiki Smith, and Peter Hujar.

“One could–and did–open a gallery with no money or art world connections. In fact, if I had known anything about business or the art world, I would never have opened. Thank God I was naive.”

-Gracie Mansion, “New, Used & Improved: Art for the 1980’s”

In a neighborhood full of eccentrics and accidental gallerists, Gracie Mansion still managed to stand out with a truly exceptional entrance into the art world. Born Joanne Mayhew Young, Gracie was an art student in Newark where she was influenced by Fluxus member Al Hansen. His influence pushed her understanding of performance and the use of space, leading her to challenge the confines of how art was then currently shown. Like so many of her fellow gallerists, Gracie never intended to run a gallery or make a profession out of selling art in general; it was about having fun, throwing amazing openings, and pushing the agenda of her many artist friends.

Her first show, while she was an assistant at a Soho gallery, was in the back of a limo, showing and selling the work of her friend, Buster Cleveland. Parked on the corner of Spring and West Broadway, potential buyers would have to climb into the back and contort their bodies in order to view the collages. Her next (and more fateful) iteration came with the launch of the Loo Division in March of 1982, when she showed the work of her friend Timothy Greathouse in the bathroom of the fifth floor walkup at 432 East 9th street.

Gracie’s experimentation with cramped spaces, many ironically synonymous with privacy (limos, bathrooms) allowed her to seamlessly fit into an art scene that made physicality a part of spectatorship, forcing viewers to endure discomfort in the process of consumption. The immediate and overwhelming success led to subsequent shows, opportunities Gracie turned into her first brick and mortar spaces. Her first spaces at 15 S.t Mark Street and 432 East 9th Street were short-lived, and were stepping stones for her first and foundational gallery, which she opened in March of 1983.

Gracie opened her gallery at 337 East 10th Street with the promise of an investment from an attorney who met Gracie around the neighborhood, who agreed to pay her rent for a year. However, this miraculous act of generosity became unnecessary as the gallery was almost immediately profitable and self-sustaining. Why he decided, having no background in art or business, to make such an offer in an art gallery run by a relative stranger, he said, “I did it for grins and well, because I liked Gracie.”

Sur Rodney Sur, Gracie’s coworker from her time as a gallery assistant in Soho, joined as a partner in 1983. Sur Rodney, a queer black man, had his own adventures in alternative art display, having had shows in an animal shelter as well hosting a cable TV show (co-hosted by his dog, Niffty Nipper-pits.) Sur Rodney also lent to the fledgling gallery a sense of calm and stability, a much-needed balance to Gracie’s magnetic but erratic impulses. Much like the seemingly opposites-attract partnership of Dean Savard and Alan Barrows of the Civilian Warfare Studio, Gracie and Sur Rodney combined their differing yet equally productive talents to somehow defy financial logic and continue to show some of the most transformative art of the East Village.

As was the case at Civilian, David Wojnarowicz would prove to be Gracie Mansion’s most illustrious star. Wojnarowicz exhibited work at Gracie Mansion as early as 1982, when he contributed his ‘Hujar Dreaming’ to the gallery’s Famous Show, art work which iconically had to be hung on the ceiling due to the lack of space. He continued to show at Gracie Mansion throughout the 1980’s and had both a solo show and group show at the gallery in 1987, including the foundational solo show Four Elements and the group show Art Against AIDS. Even though Wojnarowicz showed across dozens of galleries during his lifetime (and beyond) Gracie Mansion, along with Civilian Warfare, would be the gallery most associated with his prodigious body of work.

Wojnarowicz’s generosity was well-known, and he used his growing influence to insist that artists who were friends as well as colleagues were given exposure in his shows at Gracie Mansion (among others.) These collaborations would prove instrumental in launching these artists’ own careers, as many of them went on to become underground and art world stars.

These collaborators included Greer Lankton, (long overdue in recognition as one of the most important queer artists of the second half of the 20th century,) a colleague from Civilian Warfare and a venerable presence in the East Village art scene; Kiki Smith, who would become an art world titan but was still a struggling artist in 1983 when she worked with David of The Pier 34 Show; Judy Glantzman, another Civilian Warfare Studio alumnus and collaborator on The Missing Children Show, commissioned for the Kentucky Child Victims' Trust Fund; and the photographer Peter Hujar, Wojnarowicz’s father figure-mentor who had not had a US-based show in five years when Wojnarowicz convinced Gracie to give him one in 1986. It would be his last before he died of AIDS on November 26th, 1987.

In 1987, Gracie Mansion Gallery joined the exodus of galleries out of the East Village. After moving to 167 Avenue A in March of 1984, she again moved but this time to Soho, settling at 532 Broadway, where she remained until 1991.

Sources:

Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz. 2012. Cynthia Carr

The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene, 1974-1984. 2006. Edited by Martin J. Taylor

New, Used & Improved: Art for the Arts. 1987. By Peter Frank and Michael McKenzie.

David Wojnarowicz Knowledge Base Interview with Sur Rodney Sur By Diana Kamin & Glenn Wharton September 8, 2016