1942-46<\/p>\n
Peggy Guggenheim opens the Art of This Century gallery near New York\u2019s Museum of Modern Art and begins showing Jackson\u00a0Pollock \u2014 soon to be followed by\u00a0Mark\u00a0Rothko and Clyfford Still. With the emergence of these artists, and others Guggenheim exhibits (Robert Motherwell, Ad Reinhardt), New\u00a0York effectively replaces Paris as the center of\u00a0the art\u00a0business. <\/p>\n
1948-49<\/p>\n
A cover story in Life magazine argues that Pollock is the greatest living painter in the United States, and that his work is a new phenomenon in American art. Some critics begin referring to Pollock and several of\u00a0his peers as Abstract Expressionists. He starts becoming wealthy from the sale of his paintings and buys an Oldsmobile convertible \u2014 which he\u2019ll crash, while drunk, in 1956, dying at 44. <\/p>\n
1957<\/p>\n
Leo Castelli, a Hungarian Jew who fled to\u00a0the U.S. during World War II, opens a\u00a0gallery on East 77th Street in Manhattan. Initially focusing on European Surrealism and Abstract Expressionist painting, Castelli changes course within a year, showing Robert Rauschenberg and\u00a0Jasper Johns, who are experimenting with a\u00a0detached, vaguely ironic style that seems to chart a new course in American art. <\/p>\n
1962<\/p>\n
A gallery in West Hollywood called Ferus mounts an exhibition by an unknown artist named Andy Warhol \u2014 32 canvases, each a hand-painted rendering of a Campbell\u2019s Soup can. Only\u00a0a handful sell, for $100 each, but\u00a0the\u00a0exhibit helps establish the genre of\u00a0Pop\u00a0Art. <\/p>\n
1967<\/p>\n
A group of artists known as the Organization of Black American Culture, led by the painter William Walker, create a mural, known as the \u201cWall of Respect,\u201d on the facade of an abandoned building in Chicago, commemorating figures from Nat Turner to Aretha Franklin. A foundational work in the Black Arts Movement, which the poet Larry Neal will describe as \u201cthe aesthetic and spiritual sister of\u00a0Black Power,\u201d the mural will be destroyed when the building is torn down in 1972. But it spawns a\u00a0tradition of community murals across the U.S. that will continue to the present. <\/p>\n
1968<\/p>\n
A young art dealer named Paula\u00a0Cooper opens what\u2019s widely considered to be the first gallery in\u00a0a Lower Manhattan neighborhood that will come to be known as SoHo. Her first show is a \u201cBenefit for the Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in\u00a0Vietnam\u201d and includes works by Dan\u00a0Flavin, Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt. <\/p>\n
1969-70<\/p>\n
The gallerist and collector Virginia Dwan finances two early works of land art: Michael Heizer\u2019s<\/a> \u201cDouble Negative,\u201d for which the artist uses dynamite to create two enormous trenches at the edge of a Nevada mesa, and Robert Smithson\u2019s \u201cSpiral Jetty<\/a>,\u201d a\u00a01,500-foot-long sculpture of\u00a0mud, salt crystals and basalt rocks on\u00a0the shore of\u00a0Utah\u2019s Great Salt\u00a0Lake. <\/p>\n 1971<\/p>\n Castelli moves his business to SoHo. <\/p>\n 1972<\/p>\n In a dilapidated house in\u00a0Los\u00a0Angeles, a group of\u00a0artists led by Judy Chicago<\/a> and Miriam\u00a0Shapiro install a show called\u00a0\u201cWomanhouse.\u201d Featuring only\u00a0women artists and centering on\u00a0the theme of female empowerment, it\u2019s the first of its kind. <\/p>\n 1973<\/p>\n Robert and Ethel Scull, New York-based collectors who made a fortune from their taxi business, sell works from their collection by more than 25 living artists at the auction house Sotheby Parke-Bernet. Up to now, the secondary art market has been dominated by Impressionists, old masters and early 20th-century work. The flipping of works by living artists \u2014 like Rauschenberg and Johns \u2014 is unheard-of, but the sale is largely successful, paving the way for the\u00a0 increasing commercialization of contemporary art. <\/p>\n 1974<\/p>\n The sculptor Lynda Benglis<\/a> takes out an ad in Artforum for a show at Paula Cooper that features her fully nude, except for a pair of sunglasses, and holding a double-sided dildo. Benglis becomes a figurehead for second-wave feminism and what New York magazine will describe as \u201cthe new sexual frankness.\u201d <\/p>\n Linda Goode Bryant<\/a> opens Just Above Midtown (JAM) on West 57th Street, becoming the first Black art dealer to open a major gallery in New York. (She\u2019s preceded in Los Angeles in the late 1960s by Alonzo and Dale Brockman Davis\u2019s Brockman Gallery, and the painter Suzanne Jackson\u2019s Gallery 32.) She champions artists of color, including David Hammons<\/a>, Senga Nengudi<\/a>, Lorraine O\u2019Grady<\/a> and Howardena Pindell<\/a>. <\/p>\n 1977-79<\/p>\n Mary Boone and Larry Gagosian open galleries in SoHo and begin showing a new generation of painters that includes David Salle and Julian Schnabel \u2014 called Neo-Expressionists by some critics. <\/p>\n 1981<\/p>\n Jean-Michel Basquiat, 21, who spent his\u00a0teenage years as\u00a0a\u00a0graffiti artist, makes his\u00a0first sale of\u00a0a\u00a0painting \u2014 to\u00a0the\u00a0Blondie frontwoman, Debbie Harry, for\u00a0$200. He soon starts showing with\u00a0Gagosian and\u00a0will later move to\u00a0Boone. <\/p>\n 1987<\/p>\n Six years after the C.D.C.\u2019s report of\u00a0a rare skin cancer among gay men, there have been about 40,000 deaths related to AIDS complications. A\u00a0group of New Yorkers, including many artists, form the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP<\/a>, and paste a poster all\u00a0over the city designed by Avram Finkelstein.\u00a0The pink triangle above the slogan \u201cSilence\u00a0= Death\u201d becomes an icon of queer\u00a0activism. <\/p>\n Warhol dies at 58 following gallbladder\u00a0surgery. <\/p>\n 1988<\/p>\n The minimalist sculptor Carl Andre is acquitted of second-degree murder charges in the death of his wife, the conceptual artist Ana Mendieta<\/a> \u2014 who \u201cwent out the window\u201d of the couple\u2019s 34th-floor Greenwich Village apartment, as\u00a0Andre put it in a 911 call, following a fight between the two. <\/p>\n Basquiat dies of a heroin overdose at 27. <\/p>\n 1993<\/p>\n The Whitney Biennial in New York explores American racial politics. Daniel Joseph Martinez makes admission tags that read, \u201cI Can\u2019t Imagine Ever Wanting to Be White.\u201d Glenn Ligon<\/a> shows a work critiquing Robert Mapplethorpe\u2019s photographs of Black men. Footage of Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King is on display. \u201cI\u00a0hate the show,\u201d writes a critic for The New York Times, echoing a sentiment shared by many about an exhibition that will later be reappraised as one of the most important of its\u00a0time. <\/p>\n 1996<\/p>\n Cooper moves to a depopulated block in West Chelsea. Most\u00a0other major SoHo dealers will eventually\u00a0join her, including Gagosian and Boone.<\/p>\n MoMA acquires the full set of Warhol\u2019s \u201cCampbell\u2019s Soup Can\u201d paintings for a\u00a0reported $15 million.<\/p>\n 2002<\/p>\n A year after the Sept. 11 attacks, at ACE Gallery on Hudson Street, about a mile from ground zero, David Hammons exhibits \u201cConcerto in Black and Blue,\u201d a kind of requiem for Lower Manhattan in which the artist completely empties out the gallery space, turns off all the lights and gives visitors blue-tinted flashlights to help them navigate. <\/p>\n 2008-09<\/p>\n Markets crash in the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression \u2014 but the art market will bounce back much faster than the rest, as contemporary art becomes a safer bet than stocks for wealthy investors. <\/p>\n 2010<\/p>\n The Serbian artist Marina Abramovi\u0107<\/a> stages \u201cThe Artist Is Present\u201d at MoMA \u2014 sitting silently for hours as audience members line up to sit across from her. The show is a surprise hit, and \u201cperformance art\u201d will soon be used to describe everything from musicians\u2019 stagecraft to the public antics of some of our more perplexing celebrities.<\/p>\n 2014<\/p>\n The painter Walter Robinson describes a new crop of\u00a0abstract painters, most fresh out of art school, as\u00a0Zombie Formalists, artists making inoffensive, decorative and aesthetically uniform works. Practically the only interesting thing about their art, he says, is\u00a0how much collectors are willing to spend on it. <\/p>\n In Brooklyn, at the former Domino Sugar Factory, Kara Walker<\/a> installs her sculpture \u201cA Subtlety\u201d: a sphinx with Black features that is 75 feet tall, 35 feet long and made of more than 30 tons of white sugar, among other materials. <\/p>\n 2016-17<\/p>\n A solo exhibition by the painter Kerry\u00a0James Marshall<\/a> at the Metropolitan Museum\u2019s temporary Breuer Building outpost in New\u00a0York, the first at the Met by a living Black artist, becomes a critical and commercial sensation and a symbol for a larger reckoning among arts institutions about how Black artists have been\u00a0underrepresented. <\/p>\n A 1982 untitled Basquiat painting sells for $110.5 million\u00a0at Sotheby\u2019s, breaking the record for the\u00a0most\u00a0expensive work ever sold at auction by\u00a0an\u00a0American\u00a0artist. <\/p>\n 2019<\/p>\n Art institutions begin to cut ties with prominent philanthropists, including the Sackler family<\/a>, owners of Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin. Warren B. Kanders<\/a>, the chairman of the Whitney and the\u00a0owner of a company that manufactures tear gas, resigns following protests; Leon Black, a friend of Jeffrey Epstein, who also dies this year in a New York jail, will step down as chairman of MoMA\u2019s board of trustees two years later. In subsequent years, museums will face increasing political pressure from artists, audiences and employees \u2014 whether over charges of censoring art about the war in Gaza or, in the words of one activist group, \u201cfor contributions to colonial looting and\u00a0gentrification.\u201d <\/p>\n 2020<\/p>\n The Covid-19 pandemic shuts down most cultural venues, some for good. <\/p>\n The murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis sparks nationwide protests. Artists respond, including with a Black\u00a0Lives\u00a0Matter mural painted on 16th Street in\u00a0Washington. <\/p>\n 2025<\/p>\n Donald Trump begins his second term. The\u00a0Black Lives Matter street mural is\u00a0paved\u00a0over<\/a> following Congress\u2019s threat to\u00a0withhold federal funding for the city. Trump pressures Washington\u2019s arts institutions \u2014 with more threats of funding cuts \u2014 to stop mounting exhibitions that promote what his administration deems \u201cdivisive, race-centered ideology.\u201d Amy Sherald, who painted the official portrait of Michelle Obama in 2017, cancels her exhibit<\/a> at\u00a0the National Portrait Gallery.<\/p>\n