The question “What is American art?” might conjure the hyperrealism of Raphaelle Peale and William Harnett, the bold graphic style of Stuart Davis and Jacob Lawrence, or the Precisionist forms of Charles Sheeler. Little known, however, is that such notions of American art are significantly owed to a Russian Jewish immigrant named Edith Halpert. The founder of the Downtown Gallery in New York, Halpert shaped an identity for American art, declaring that its thrilling heterogeneity and democratic values were what most distinguished it from the European avant-garde.
For forty-plus years, Halpert’s gallery brought recognition and market success to now-legendary American artists — among them Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, and Georgia O’Keeffe, in addition to the artists mentioned above. She relentlessly championed nonwhite, female, and unknown artists and was a formative advisor in the shaping of many of the nation’s most celebrated art museums and collections, from San Francisco to Boston. Not content with those achievements, she also pioneered the appreciation and collecting of American folk art.
Richly illustrated with works that passed through her groundbreaking gallery, this book tells the extraordinary and largely overlooked story of her career and legacy. The artists Halpert launched into the American canon are household names — and this book compellingly argues that hers should be, as well.
Visual Arts
Edith Halpert, The Downtown Gallery, and the Rise of American Art
January 1, 2013
Discussion Questions
“I often think,” wrote artist Charles Sheeler, “where would any of us be if there were no Downtown Gallery?” This companion volume to the Jewish Museum’s recent exhibition, which quotes Sheeler, is a richly-textured appraisal of the Downtown Gallery’s visionary founder, Edith Halpert. Author Rebecca Shaykin highlights Halpert’s long-obscured history as a trailblazing gallerist and intrepid champion of American modernists.
A Russian Jewish immigrant, Halpert helped support her family during her early years in New York while studying art and forming lasting friendships with artists. She opened her Downtown Gallery in 1926. As Shaykin’s account reveals, in her forty-year career as a gallerist, Halpert was a leader in myriad respects: as the first of a vanguard of powerful women art dealers; as one of the first gallerists to locate downtown, closer to working artists; as a trusted advisor to key U.S. art patrons; as a savvy merchandiser committed to making art affordable and gallery-going less intimidating; as an impassioned promoter of American modernists at a time when European art held sway; and as a progressive whose recognition of talent embraced people of color, women, Jews and self-taught folk artists.
Guided by Shaykin’s meticulous scholarship, this vividly-illustrated volume supports a fuller appreciation of Halpert’s influence. Readers will quickly recognize that artworks from the Downtown Gallery that appear in this revelatory book — by such artists as Georgia O’Keefe, Jacob Lawrence, Stuart Davis, and Ben Shahn — have shaped the identities of our most celebrated institutions and continue to grace their walls.
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