Park Place Gallery

Park Place Gallery was a contemporary art gallery located in SoHo in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States, during the mid-to-late 1960s. Park Place Gallery was located at 542 West Broadway, on what is now LaGuardia Place just north of Houston Street in the neighborhood that is now called "SoHo". It is thought of as being the first gallery of the 1960s in that area of Lower Manhattan.

Originally opened as a cooperative gallery in 1963 near Park Place in Lower Manhattan, in 1965 it moved to a new and larger location at 542 West Broadway. The gallery was a large open exhibition space with an office and second showing space in the back. In general there were two-person exhibitions each featuring a painter and a sculptor in the larger front room, and a small selection of artists work in the back room. The first director of Park Place Gallery was John Gibson who later opened his own gallery in the early 1970s. He was succeeded by Paula Cooper who after Park Place Gallery closed in the late 1960s opened the Paula Cooper Gallery in SoHo. She became a pioneer of the contemporary art scene and a forerunner of the population explosion of art galleries in New York City during the 1970s.

The gallery showcased works by younger, less established artists with an emphasis on Geometric abstraction, shaped canvas, Hard-edge painting, Op Art, paradoxical geometric objects, sculpture, and experimental art. Many of the sculptors, painters and other artists who exhibited in Park Place Gallery were interested in cutting edge architecture, electronic music, and minimal art. The gallery also exhibited the works of lesser known young and older artists, often for the first time. Some of the artists that were exhibited at the Park Place Gallery included Mark di Suvero, Leo Valledor, Peter Forakis [1] (who lived in Petaluma, CA), Dean Fleming, Bernard Kirschenbaum, Anthony Magar, Forrest (Frosty) Myers, Ed Ruda, Robert Grosvenor, Tamara Melcher, David Novros, Gay Glading, Jon Baldwin, and several others. Some of the artists that were invited to show, or play concerts or read poetry at the gallery included Ronald Bladen, Sol LeWitt, Eva Hesse, Al Held, Sylvia Stone, Robert Smithson, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Brice Marden, Charles Ginnever, Charles Ross, Robert Morris (artist), Kenneth Snelson, Robert Swain, Carlos Villa, Mario Yrissary, Peter Reginato, Ronnie Landfield, Carl Andre, Jake Berthot, David R. Prentice, Mac Wells, Bob Neuwirth, Joan Jonas, and dozens of young and unknown painters, sculptors, conceptual artists, performance artists and composers among others.

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