Longevity
At age 17, Cooper already knew that she wanted, in her words, ‘to help artists.’ Her mother was an amateur painter, and Cooper spent her late teens seeing as much art as possible in Paris and beyond. In her 20s she learned the trade working in galleries. Many colleagues and artists have noted her singularity of vision and the ‘firmness’ of her personality.
Even amid choppier waters, Paula Cooper Gallery was ‘never, ever’ on the brink of closing. Broad economic downturns such as the stock market crash in 1987 barely registered, the gallerist has said, because the business was lean and nimble. For one of her senior partners, Steve Henry, a consistent thread has been the gallery’s ‘belief in the radical, however one defines that.’ Cooper has often risked the unknown and promoted the avant-garde, always encouraging artistic evolution over mere production. Another thread might be patience – she understands that markets ebb and flow, as do the conditions of artists’ lives. Cooper has also made it a mission, she says, to ‘help people see things differently, open their minds, infuse their lives with a wholeness, at least while looking at a particular work of art – to work magic of a sort.’ In 2022 in The New York Times, M.H. Miller wrote that the gallery’s longevity was due to ‘some combination of integrity, taste, and sheer willpower.’