During the 1980s, Manhattan below 14th Street was a vibrant and affordable place to live and make art, a flourishing scene for creative expression. With the city as their stage, artists working there engaged with graffiti culture and street art, photographed their communities of friends and lovers, and produced collaborative forms of sculpture, painting, design, and performance. The rough-hewn streets still bore the traces of New York’s economic collapse in the 1970s, and downtown was fertile ground for art responding to urban blight, Reaganomics, gentrification, and the first wave of the AIDS pandemic. Producing art for public spaces as well as exhibitions in galleries, studios, and nightclubs scattered across the neighborhood, these artists turned their environment into a hub for the integration of art and life.
Collection 1970s–Present
202
Downtown New York
202
Downtown New York
Stay connected and enjoy the #MuseumFromHome
Floor 2
MoMA
- MoMA, Floor 2, 202
Installation images
In 2018–19, MoMA collaborated with Google Arts & Culture Lab on a project using machine learning to identify artworks in installation photos. That project has concluded, and works are now being identified by MoMA staff.
If you notice an error, please contact us at digital@moma.org.
If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA’s collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).
All requests to license audio or video footage produced by MoMA should be addressed to Scala Archives at firenze@scalarchives.com. Motion picture film stills or motion picture footage from films in MoMA’s Film Collection cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For licensing motion picture film footage it is advised to apply directly to the copyright holders. For access to motion picture film stills please contact the Film Study Center. More information is also available about the film collection and the Circulating Film and Video Library.
If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication or moma.org, please email text_permissions@moma.org. If you would like to publish text from MoMA’s archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to archives@moma.org.
This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please send feedback to digital@moma.org.