The Girl with the Gallery: Edith Gregor Halpert and the Making of the Modern Art Market

Edith Gregor Halpert, Lindsay Pollock

ISBN 10: 1586483021 / ISBN 13: 9781586483029

Published by Public Affairs Ltd., 2006

About this Item

Chronicling the forgotten story of Edith Gregor Halpert, the Russian-Jewish immigrant who's ambition lead her to run one of the most successful downtown galleries in New York and single-handedly creating the market for American art, journalist Lindsay Pollack offers this unforgettable life story of class and tragic loss. Her Downtown Gallery hosted some of the great American art luminaries of the century, from Charles Sheeler, Arthur Dove, to Georgia O'Keefe, and her relentless passion would lay the groundwork for the aggressive promotion and sales of artwork that continues to dominate the backrooms of galleries today. Notes, Bibliography, Index. Illus., color/b&w. 484p.

Seller Inventory # 1850594

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Girl with the Gallery: Edith Gregor Halpert and the Making of the Modern Art Market
• Publisher: Public Affairs Ltd.
• Publication Date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1586483021
• ISBN 13: 9781586483029
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • ART-BIOGRAPHY

About this title

Synopsis

In an era when American artists didn't count and women were expected to stay home, Edith Gregor Halpert burst onto the fledgling New York gallery scene, defying all cultural and societal rules. In 1926, Halpert, just twenty-six years old, opened one of the first art galleries in Greenwich Village and set about turning the art world upside down. Her Downtown Gallery, which she ran for forty-four years, laid the groundwork for the art market's modern era, and its aggressive promotion and sales tactics. Halpert cultivated the most illustrious art collectors of the day, invented the market for folk art, and pushed the first group of American artists working in a modern vernacular into the history books, including Stuart Davis, Jacob Lawrence, Georgia O'Keeffe, Ben Shahn, and Arthur Dove. Despite all this, Edith Halpert herself has been lost to history. Until now.

In The Girl with the Gallery, journalist Lindsay Pollock brings Halpert and her era vividly back to life, tracing the story of how this remarkable woman, who started out a penniless Jewish immigrant, made it her mission to fight for American art and artists. Illlustrated with eight pages of full color photographs, this is biography at its finest, an unforgettable story of class, money, vanity, jealousy, and tragic loss.

About the Author

Lindsay Pollock is a journalist specializing in the art market. She currently works for Bloomberg News, where she writes a weekly column and reports frequently for TV and radio. A former columnist for the New York Sun, she also writes regularly for Art & Auction, Art News, Art Review, and The Art Newspaper. This is her first book. Lindsay lives in New York City.