Correction: March 3, 2007

A brief art review in Weekend yesterday about “Limelight,” an exhibition at the Triple Candie gallery in Harlem based on a 1959 show at the Limelight coffeehouse and gallery in the West Village, misidentified the content of the original show. It included reprints of photographs by major artists lent by the George Eastman House in Rochester, not originals.

The review also misstated Triple Candie’s dealings with Eastman on the current show; it did not request a similar loan from that institution and thus was not denied one. And it referred imprecisely to the history of the gallery. Triple Candie says that its goal is to provide Harlem with a site for contemporary art and artists with opportunities unavailable in commercial galleries; its original mission was not to show the work of Harlem artists.

LIMELIGHT
Gallery and Coffee House,
1954-61

Triple Candie
461 West 126th Street, Harlem
Through March 18

From 1954 to 1961, Helen Gee, photography maven and skilled photographic retoucher, ran the Limelight, a coffeehouse at 91 Seventh Avenue in Greenwich Village that became a gathering place for writers, editors and photographers. It also housed New York’s first gallery devoted to postwar photography. In seven years, Ms. Gee mounted an impressive roster of solo shows: Berenice Abbott, Ansel Adams, Gordon Parks, Edward Weston, Minor White and others.

Drawing from Ms. Gee’s 1997 book, “Limelight: A Memoir,” Shelly Bancroft and Peter Nesbett, founders and curators at Triple Candie, have constructed a homage in the form of a plywood-walled space inside the gallery with cafe tables and chairs and self-service coffee, available at a 1950s price of 25 cents a cup.

A cub1cle inside the structure recreates, roughly, a 1959 Limelight show titled “The History of Photography,” which included artists like Lisette Model (with whom Ms. Gee studied briefly), Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen and Robert Frank.

Ms. Gee’s 1959 show consisted of reprints lent by the George Eastman House in Rochester; Triple Candie has resorted instead to photocopies mounted on cardboard.

A similar situation arose last year when Ms. Bancroft and Mr. Nesbett set out to mount a retrospective of the work of David Hammons. According to the gallery, the artist wouldn’t cooperate, so they installed “David Hammons: The Unauthorized Retrospective,” an exhibition consisting solely of black-and-white reproductions of his work. The unorthodox show was oddly in sync with Mr. Hammons’s own oeuvre, raising interesting questions about art and representation, reproduction and authorship.

“Limelight” doesn’t rise similarly to the occasion. The cafe is a light exercise in nostalgia (and not the first tribute: Sarah Morthland mounted a “Limelight” show in 2002), and the photocopies, unlabeled and unaccompanied by a checklist, impose the organizers’ frustration with George Eastman House on the viewer.

It all makes you wish that Triple Candie would return to its original mission, to show the work of Harlem artists, many of whom would be thrilled to exhibit their work in this scrappy, cavernous nonprofit space. MARTHA SCHWENDENER

If the gallery's mission, original or otherwise, is or was "not to show the work of Harlem artists" perhaps someone can clarify the following from the Triple Candie website. From http://www.triplecandie.org/page5.html - "Only artists living in Harlem may submit unsolicited materials for consideration." From http://www.triplecandie.org/page6.html - "Triple Candie accepts unsolicited materials ONLY from artists who live or work above 96th Street in Manhattan" and "IMPORTANT: We do not accept unsolicited materials from artists living outside Harlem or Washington Heights." Supporters, individuals and foundations such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Warhol Foundation who each provided grants of $50,000 to Triple Candie, should be interested in this elucidation of mission.


- anonymous (guest) 3-05-2007 6:55 am

I think the key word is "unsolicited," anonymous.
As I read this, it's the gallery of those who do the work there--funded presumably by foundations, etc., who like the programming.
To the extent it does projects other than its own curatorial ventures, it opens its walls to proposals from artists within a specific geographic range, which seems rather neighborhood-conscious to me.
Not sure how you get from there to some kind of requirement to show *only* Harlem artists. If that's what you're implying.

Not for profit status is contingent on having an educational or charitable purpose--that's really the only requirement.

- tom moody 3-05-2007 7:12 am

Even though lime light is a nice idea, I will have to side with the opinion that the exhibit itself is light, and an exercize in nostalgia. It would have been more unfortunate for me when I still believed the directors to be responsible and accountable for their own actions.
- anonymous (guest) 3-07-2007 4:58 am

As I understand "Limelight," it was meant, not as nostalgia, but as a counterpoint to the heavy commerce of the Armory show and other fairs happening at the same time. A protest that art could be civilized and thoughtful, as opposed to a pig trough.

Not sure what your second sentence means.
- tom moody 3-07-2007 5:08 am

is JS talking about TC here ?

This hasn’t stopped galleries, however, from mounting not one but two unauthorized surveys of his oeuvre in the last year.

I think it's more of a vague smear. He says "galleries," but TC is just one gallery and theirs was more than a year ago.


- tom moody 3-24-2007 1:48 am