Art for The 100th Time (!!!)
For everyone who did not know you are allowed in the room, these one hundred newsletters were written with so much love
One hundred years ago, a woman named Edith Halpert opened a room downtown that decidedly expanded the doorway to accessing contemporary art.
One hundred Anne Parke Art Advisory newsletters later, I am writing to you from the very same room at People’s.
I have now published 100 newsletters and all of that writing and research has made me realize that Halpert’s real invention was not just a gallery but a door that welcomed more people in to collect art. And that’s when I made the connection that I have been building a similar door, a century later. Contemporary art is not a closed system that you need permission to enter, and the art you choose to live with helps decide what our generation remembers.
I am celebrating today’s milestone by sharing the artworks we installed last week for the latest exhibition at the Downtown Gallery.
I keep bottles of champagne chilled, labeled, and ready for each time I hit a New Year’s resolution or a personal milestone, and you KNOW today I will be popping one to celebrate this momentous occasion!
You can help me celebrate by becoming a paid subscriber, which supports the time and research that go into discovering and curating my weekly selections of contemporary art. If you already are a paid subscriber, THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart to the top of the moon for your support. I will try not to get too emotional, but I am so grateful that you choose to spend money to access this curation. It is so meaningful that if I see you in person I might cry, and I will definitely hug you.
In 1926, Halpert opened what was then called Our Gallery at 113 West 13th Street, and the following year she changed its name to the Downtown Gallery. At a time when European art was all the rage and carried the majority of cultural cachet, she devoted herself to selling art by living American artists. I highly recommend her biography, The Girl with the Gallery, to learn about her extraordinary story and just how many times she was told her gallery concept would not work. But with her will, there was a way. She insisted time and again that these American artists were worthy of being seen, collected, and shown in museums.
Over the next decades she secured institutional placements for her artists including Jacob Lawrence, Georgia O’Keeffe, Stuart Davis and Arthur Dove among many others. Literally, you can see Lawrence’s Migration Series at MoMA and that was 1000% due to Halpert's fierce advocacy. In 1941, she showed the full Migration Series at the Downtown Gallery, the first time a Black artist was represented by a New York gallery. The following year she brokered the sale that split the series between MoMA and the Phillips Collection, making it the first work by a Black artist MoMA ever acquired.
I’m not saying that if you buy artwork at People’s it will end up at the Museum of Modern Art, but I’m not saying it won’t!
Yes, I’m an art advisor to my handful of clients, and yes, I frequently sell art from this newsletter to my subscribers. Over the past 100 issues I have realized that I am also interested in building the spaces where people actually buy contemporary art and understand what that means.
Whether that space is online, through this newsletter or Viewing Rooms educational videos; whether it’s the bookstore at the Campus or the salons I started hosting five years ago at restaurants on Orchard Street; whether it’s panels at People’s or barbecues in my backyard; whether it’s a Lower East Side gallery walk or Upstate studio visits, these are all rooms where you can learn about contemporary art, meet the people making and showing it, and ultimately buy it.
I know these are not the traditional practices of an art advisor and I know they don’t fit neatly into the existing art world infrastructures. Edith Halpert was told the Downtown Gallery would never work too. What matters is that our artists are being seen, collected, and supported, and that the cultural landscape of our times takes shape because of all of our choices.
And this is where my subscribers come into the narrative! The art you buy directly contributes to the fabric of our culture and to what goes into the art history books our kids will read. Every art collection that exists today, including the ones now hanging in museums, started with one person deciding a living artist was worth believing in.
The systems that historically served this market do NOT get to dictate how people find good art today, or who gets to participate in shaping its future. I think this is really the crux of it all, and it is both a privilege and the fun of it. Don’t wait to see what other people are buying, and definitely do not wait for permission from the establishment. Build your own collection and do it right now! (And if you do not know where to start, here you go 💚)
So for issue 100, I want to bring you back into the room where this particular story started one hundred years ago. Below are the artists currently hanging on the walls of the Downtown Gallery at People’s. As always, reply to this email with any interest and let me know if you would like to arrange a viewing to see the works in person.
One hundred issues down and a LOT more rooms to build. Enjoy!!!
Amra-Faye Wright
Amra-Faye Wright’s art stopped me in my tracks during a New York Academy of Art open studios at their April Tribeca Ball. From that first moment of discovery to the excited texts to the owners at People’s, this is an extraordinary painting by Wright and I could not be more thrilled to feature it in our gallery. She’s spent more than thirty years as an actress, singer, and dancer, including the West End and Broadway in Chicago, and she is painting the world she actually lives in. The theatrical scene encompasses so many beautiful aspects of life: connection, intimacy, friendship, love, nature, flora, fauna.
These women have stopped performing for anyone outside the room, which is exactly what it looks like when everyone in it knows they are allowed to be there and they’ve put their phones down. I love how you can see Degas’ influence in the cropped, off-angle composition and German Expressionism in the emotional, vibrant colors. I don’t even really need to highlight the scale of this work for its retail. And for all you Easter egg hunters, spot the penguin and stay tuned…
Amra-Faye Wright
The Dinner Party - Women gathered in their own cadence, unselfconscious in each other’s company, while in the periphery, animals appear as observers to the quiet theater of appetite and excess, 2026
Oil on canvas
48 x 60 inches
$4,000
Abbi Kenny
Abbi Kenny has been featured several times in previous newsletters, so now is a good time to pay attention to artists I put in newsletters before I put them into exhibitions. And just wait until you see her work, Pictured: Mary Bliss Parsons, Not a Witch, An Ancestor of Mine! You might find the portrait unsettling at first, but as this newsletter teaches, dive a little deeper and learn that Mary Bliss Parsons was accused of witchcraft in the 1600s but then exonerated. I mean... who doesn’t want to live with a symbol of defiance forged from the fires of adversity? (If your name starts with R and rhymes with “wish,” please ignore this).
Abbi Kenny
“Outlander! We have your woman!”, 2026
Acrylic and acrylic gouache on panel
10 x 8 inches
$1,500
Abbi Kenny
Pictured: Mary Bliss Parsons, Not a Witch, An Ancestor of Mine, 2025
Acrylic, molding paste, acrylic gouache, and colored pencil on canvas
48 x 42 inches
$4,800
Abbi Kenny
Cypress Grove Picnics in our Federal Hill Yard, 2021
Acrylic and oil on canvas
24 x 36 inches
$3,400
Abbi Kenny
Liptauer Cheese (in Cabbage) A Cooking Class Appetizer, 2023
Acrylic, molding paste, pumice gel, glass beads, beads, rice, glass flakes, muscovite mica, and paper collage on canvas
30 x 30 inches
$3,500
Marcel Alcalá
Marcel Alcalá has also been featured several times in previous newsletters, and I am honored they agreed to show at People’s! When I talk about being a part of the cultural landscape, I mean showing up to exhibitions and events they participated in and collecting their art because it means something from those experiences. Subscribe now to stay in the loop for upcoming events with them.
Courtesy of the artist and Night Gallery, Los Angeles. Photography by Nik Massey
Marcel Alcalá
Performer in Counter Pose, 2023
Oil on canvas
48 x 38 inches
$12,000
Courtesy of the artist and Night Gallery, Los Angeles
Marcel Alcalá
Admiration, a Gift., 2025
Oil on canvas
40 x 30 inches
$10,000
Courtesy of the artist and Night Gallery, Los Angeles. Photography by Nik Massey
Marcel Alcalá
A Reflection Through Fresh Roses, 2023
Oil on canvas, walnut frame
30 x 30 inches
$9,000
Lauren Krasnoff
Lauren Krasnoff I mean, WHAT A FIND. Several newsletters ago, a brilliant young art dealer named Hannah Root reached out to introduce herself. Turns out I had just connected with an absolute force in the art world. You can email her at hannah@meganmulrooney.com to get on the gallery’s preview list (mention this newsletter to get on her first-look list) and I promise your socks will be knocked off like mine were. So when Hannah suggested we consider Krasnoff’s paintings for People’s, it was an immediate home run. In fact, there was so little deliberation over her works that I’m genuinely not sure how much longer these two pieces will be available, so if you have any interest at all, please let me know ASAP.
The paintings are scenes of sports spectators, which to me are emotions incarnate. Krasnoff’s paintings encapsulate the swell of joy at a goal, the gut punch of the final whistle, the collective inhale when nobody breathes during a penalty. She gives the crowd the same value that most painters reserve for portraits of athletes, so any artwork that embodies human emotion, reframes perspective, and shifts value is a hat trick in my book (if you are a NY Giants fan, reply here for a crazy story Krasnoff shared with me about Steve Weatherford).
Lauren Krasnoff
crowd in ultramarine and ochre, 2025
Oil and acrylic on canvas
60 x 66 inches
$5,000
Lauren Krasnoff
crowd in blue and orange, 2025
Oil, acrylic, and graphite on canvas
42 x 70 inches
(two panels, 42 x 35 inches each)
$4,500
Wes Aderhold
Wes Aderhold is such a darling of People’s that we keep adding new work of his in subsequent exhibitions because guests cannot get enough. His take on cubism is so fresh and I adore the chic, ultra contemporary palettes. It is rare to encounter an artist whose work is immediately visually accessible and then pulls you down a rabbit hole of art history, philosophy, the physical body, and the spiritual heart. I love an artist who keeps expanding the formal canon, and I especially love talking to Wes about where his practice is going. (Wes, if you are reading this, I obviously need to put you on the next panel at People’s.) You would be lucky to spot him at People’s one night, and luckier still to add one of his works to your collection.
Wes Aderhold
Untitled, 2026
Acrylic, charcoal, oil pastel, and fiber paste on canvas
9 x 6 inches
$1,800 each
One hundred issues in and still standing in a room, looking at art, telling you about it
Wes Aderhold
Untitled, 2026
Acrylic, charcoal, oil pastel, and fiber paste on canvas
30 x 24 inches
$6,500
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