Making Art Make History: Reconstructing the Market for Modern Art in New York City, 1929-1959.

FAIN: FT-51874-03

Andrea Pappas
President and Board of Trustees of Santa Clara College (Santa Clara, CA 95053-0001)

This project consists of research aimed at producing a history of art dealing in New York City and its role in establishing and maintaining an American avant-garde from 1929-1959. Through an examination of gallery records, artists' papers and living witnesses, I will reconstruct the exhibition practices of galleries--especially the gatekeeper galleries--and their roles in shaping the audiences and markets for American modernist art on the cusp of its international triumph. My analysis will focus on the hitherto overlooked ways galleries' exhibition practices shaped the artistic strategies and reception of women, ethnic minorities, and other artists who fall outside standard histories of this period.