Mary Boone, notorious art dealer, gallery director, and tax evader has returned to the New York art scene. Her days of showcasing and dealing were long over, and her reign on the city’s art market remained in the eighties. Until last week.
The seventy three year old resurfaced with a new exhibition, “Downtown/Uptown”, in the coveted Lévy Gorvy Dayan Art Gallery, on Madison Avenue. The pieces were chosen almost as a homage to the Pop Art Scene in America spanning from the late fifties, reaching its peak in the sixties with strong artists emerging such as Andy Warhol with his portraits and commercial art, and Frank Stella’s abstracts.
The exhibition is expressive of her glory days. Born in Pennsylvania in 1951, Boone moved to New York City at nineteen to study art history and sculpture, in 1977 the Mary Boone Gallery opened in SoHo. At the time, SoHo was transitioning from an industrial area with struggling artists to an underground art hub with affordable lofts being converted into studios and homes, and with a high concentration of artists, came a growing alternative culture which she took advantage of.
She quickly gained distinction with her choice to display neo-expressionism, a style which had only just emerged as a reaction against the conceptual and minimal art that seasoned the decade. With help from Swiss art dealer and collector, Bruno Bischofberger, the two successfully brought the movement to Europe, defining a decade of art, as her gallery continued to develop and influence the art market into the 1980s.
Her downfall began in the 1990’s. Artists leaving, shows no longer selling out and growing rumors of bankruptcy.
In 2018, court documents were revealed, and disclosed that Boone had been paying personal expenses with gallery funds for a number of years. It was estimated that over $700,000 of gallery funds were used to remodel her Manhattan apartment, along with over $300,000 worth of personal purchases made on corporate credit cards.
Boone spent thirty months in federal prison and was released in June 2020, speaking to reporters at the exhibition she stated, “I was a woman selling unnecessary, glamorous things to rich people, what’s not to hate?”. The exhibition can be seen as a reflection of the rise, fall and resurgence of Boone. The experimentation and creativity of the 1980’s New York art scene can’t be replicated but with this exhibition featuring works from artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Ross Bleckner, and Jeff Koons, the feelings of fluidity and possibility from that era are reintroduced. Brett Gorvy, co-founder of the gallery insists that although most of the featured artists have passed, “The community still exists”. Representatives from the gallery also stated that, “Downtown/Uptown encourages viewers to explore the forces of creativity, community, and culture at play and to reconsider and discover anew the art of this singular era”.
Mary Boone’s return does not erase her past, nor does it seek to. The exhibition’s curation heavily reflects her heyday, making it both celebratory and self-aware. The exhibition will run until the 13th of December 2025.
