The Downtown Show: The New York Art Scene, 1974–1984

For over 150 years, Downtown New York has been an epicenter of creative ferment. Indeed, for New Yorkers and just about everyone else, Downtown is synonymous with experimentation. This exhibition examines the rich cross-section of artists and activities that coexisted and often overlapped in Lower Manhattan between 1974 and 1984. Emerging out of the deflated optimism of the Summer of Love and energized by the enactment of the Loft Law—which made it legal for artists to live in SoHo’s industrial spaces—the Downtown scene attracted painters, sculptors, photographers, musicians, performers, filmmakers, and writers who could afford the then-low rents of SoHo lofts and Lower East Side tenements. Downtown artists violated the gap between high art and mass culture, removed the production and reception of avant-garde art from isolation in elite circles, and directly confronted social and political concerns. Creating work that was both populist and subversive as well as utopian and raw, they irreverently pushed the limits of traditional artistic categories—visual artists were also writers, writers developed performance pieces, performers incorporated videos into their works, and everyone was in a band. (more)

The Downtown Show: The New York Art Scene, 1974–1984