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The Expansion of Art in the 1970s and Alternative Spaces: 112 Greene Street, The Kitchen, and Artists Space|

Im Sue Lee 1

1한국예술종합학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, burgeoning alternative spaces featured the outside of the museum-gallery system, along with the proliferation of new art forms such as site-specific art, performance art, video art, intermedia and mixed-media work. The first alternative spaces were founded as artist-run galleries before the National Endowment of the Arts offered grants under the category of artist workshops in 1972. Around 1973, professional curators and art administrators began establishing more organized alternative spaces. The alternative spaces provided technical support and testing grounds for artists who experimented with new art forms that mainstream museums and galleries hesitated to accommodate. This paper conducts three case studies of key alternative spaces established in New York City in the early 1970s: 112 Greene Street, The Kitchen, and Artists Space. First, to address how the early alternative spaces opened artistic activity to the urban fabric and to the community, this paper focuses on significant artistic practices at 112 Greene Street. Next, it examines the role of the early alternative spaces in understanding electronic media as an art medium by analyzing selective practices at The Kitchen. Next, this paper addresses how Artists Space catalyzed postmodern practice and established the key terms for the institutionalization of postmodern art and theory. This paper also attempts to provide a picture of the downtown art scene in New York in the 1970s, featured by the three alternative spaces.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.