The first week of March, information science students from the University of Michigan volunteered at cultural institutions around New York City. I volunteered at the Guggenheim Museum Archives on Hudson Street to continue work on the joint lecture series Round and About the Guggenheim, which aired on WNYC in the 1970s.
On October 26, 1977, Guggenheim Public Affairs Officer Mimi Poser invited three SoHo gallery owners, Paula Cooper (Paula Cooper Gallery), Nancy Hoffman (Nancy Hoffman Gallery), and Ivan Karp (OK Harris), to the program to discuss trends in art galleries and how SoHo galleries were different from others in the city. SoHo, a small, industrial area formerly called "Hell's Hundred Acres" was then emerging as a new space for galleries; galleries were moving into abandoned warehouses and adapting the cast-iron architecture for the display of art. Paula Cooper was the first to open an art gallery there on Prince Street in 1968.
Poser opened the discussion by asking the gallery owners the reasons they first came to SoHo; their answers included the desire for "cleansing" and "mental change," distance from "pinstripe suits on Madison Avenue," and more space at lower prices. According to Poser, "SoHo ha[d] a style all its own. One could even call it a lifestyle." In this clip, the gallery owners describe the physical differences between uptown and downtown gallery spaces, and lament the changing nature of SoHo as restaurants and boutiques began to appear in larger numbers.
–Mallory Hood, volunteer
WNYC Interview Program: Round and About the Guggenheim: Soho Galleries / Poser, Mimi; Cooper, Paula; Hoffman, Nancy; Karp, Ivan, 10/26/1977. Reel to Reel collection. A0004. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Archives. New York, NY.