Radical NY! is a two-part exhibition about distinct generations of New York artists who challenged the definitions of art and re-envisioned the artist’s role in society. The first chapter focuses on the Abstract Expressionist era, with seventeen gestural abstract paintings and works on paper from the 1940s-60s by artists including Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, and Jackson Pollock. The Downtown Show:The New York Art Scene, 1974-1984 surveys the vibrant period when a new, postmodern attitude towards artistic production surfaced in Lower Manhattan. Communities of artists, musicians, performers, filmmakers, and writers in Soho, Tribeca, and the East Village produced work that was experimental and collaborative, utopian and raw, antic and angry. Featured artists who shaped the scene include Jean-Michel Basquiat, Nan Goldin, Keith Haring, Richard Hell, Barbara Kruger, Christian Marclay, and Cindy Sherman. Over three hundred paintings, sculptures, graffiti, videos, and photographs, as well as journals, manuscripts, and ephemera — all exhibited in a funky salon style — create a colorful picture of a radically new and boundary-breaking approach to art and life. New York is more than just a location, it’s an attitude — and, that attitude forever changed the face of American art and culture.

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