Grand Central Art Galleries

Grand Central Art Galleries

Medal commemorating the founding of the Grand Central Art Galleries
Established	1922
Dissolved	1994
Location	New York City, New York, United States
Type	Art gallery
Director	Erwin S. Barrie, James D. Cox
President	Walter Leighton Clark

The Grand Central Art Galleries were the exhibition and administrative space of the nonprofit Painters and Sculptors Gallery Association, an artists' cooperative established in 1922 by Walter Leighton Clark together with John Singer Sargent, Edmund Greacen, and others. Artists closely associated with the Grand Central Art Galleries included Hovsep Pushman, George de Forest Brush, and especially Sargent, whose posthumous show took place there in 1928.

The Galleries were active from 1923 until 1994. For 29 years they were located on the sixth floor of Grand Central Terminal. At their 1923 opening, the Galleries covered 14,000 square feet (1,300 m²) and offered nine exhibition areas and a reception room, described as "the largest sales gallery of art in the world." In 1958 the Galleries moved to the second floor of the Biltmore Hotel, where they had six exhibition rooms and an office. They remained at the Biltmore for 23 years, until it was converted into an office building. The Galleries then moved to 24 West 57th Street, where they remained until they ceased activity.

In addition to their main offices, the Grand Central Art Galleries directed a number of other enterprises. They launched the Grand Central School of Art in 1923, opened a branch gallery at Fifth Avenue and 51st Street in 1933, and in 1947 established Grand Central Moderns to show non-figurative works. The Grand Central Art Galleries were also responsible for the creation, design,

The Painters and Sculptors Gallery Association was established in 1922 by Walter Leighton Clark together with John Singer Sargent, Edmund Greacen, and others. As stated in the Galleries' 1934 catalog, their goal was to "give a broader field to American art; to exhibit in a larger way to a more numerous audience, not in New York alone but throughout the country, thus displaying to the world the inherent value which our art undoubtedly possesses."

The founders envisioned a nonprofit, cooperative organization, but one firmly supported by the best business principles Greacen, an artist, is credited with having suggested the Galleries' financial structure: Artists who wished to join were required to give a work of art each year for three years as an initiation fee, after which they became life members. Non-artists (referred to as "lay members") agreed to give a sum of money (initially $600, the equivalent of $7,500 in 2008) to purchase one of the donated works, but available only after the first year. As Clark wrote: "The beauty of this plan of operation is that it accomplishes results in a practical way and is free from the sting of charity because the artists are actually underwriting their own organization." Initial interest was strong, with many artists and lay members joining the new organization. "We had upward of one hundred names on each of the above lists," Clark wrote.