"The Girl with the Gallery" is about Edith Halpert.
"The Girl with the Gallery"
About Edith Halpert
In an era when American artists lacked the respect of their European counterparts and women were not expected to pursue careers, 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 methods of aggressive promotion and sales tactics. Halpert cultivated the most illustrious art collectors of the day, invented the market for American 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, Charles Sheeler, and Ben Shahn. 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. Pollock traces Halpert’s life through her roots as a penniless Jewish immigrant; her advantageous marriage to artist Sam Halpert; the founding of The Downtown Gallery and her relentless pursuit of the top American artists; her role as the Art Dealers Association of America’s; the New Deal’s Public Works Art Project, the grand opening of Radio City Music Hall; and Jacob Lawrence’s groundbreaking first show; as well as her eventual decline into illness. The result is a gorgeous portrait of a daring, charming woman who made it her mission to fight for American art and artists. This is biography at its finest, an unforgettable life story of class, money, vanity, jealousy, bitterness, and, above all, art.
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P: 212-397-6666 x 532
Publisher: Public Affairs Books
