Living in Chatham Square, on the Bowery…where we all hung out, was the beginning of my having a sense that community was an important part of the work. Before, my model for being an artist was this sort of lone-person up in a garret, where you work all alone all day and then you go out to a bar and just get drunk and get in a fight and then sleep all morning and get back into it. That changed in those years.—Mary Heilmann, quoted in Bowery Artist Tribute, 2010

Lured by cheap rents and vast lofts, artists began populating the Bowery in the late 1950s. By 1965, there were over one hundred painters living along the Bowery, among them Cy Twombly, Robert Indiana, Al Loving, and Elizabeth Murray. 

While the lofts themselves remained the primary attraction, with each new artist’s arrival, a second draw emerged: a growing artistic community. This unplanned, creative network impacted hundreds of artists, accelerating the exchange of ideas, generating systems for sharing resources, and staving off the isolation and self-doubt of a studio practice. 

In conjunction with Lower East Side History Month, the New Museum invited three painters who have lived and worked on the Bowery to reflect on this creative community and the effect it’s had on their individual practices.

Sunday, May 10 at 2 pm: We All Hung Out, with artists David Diao, Mary Heilmann, and Billy Sullivan, moderated by Ethan Swan, editor of the New Museum publication Bowery Artist Tribute. Tickets (1/2 museum admission is free with ticket purchase).

Lower East Side History Month information.

Photo above: 10 Chatham Square roof Garden, 1970s. Left to right: Dicky Landry, Norman Fisher, Mary Heilmann, and Gerard Merrill. Photo: Tina Girouard, from Bowery Artist Tribute, courtesy the New Museum.