This website focuses on 19th century New York galleries with two specific goals in mind. First, to create an initial set of short biographies for prominent New York galleries and dealers in the 19th century. And second, linking these gallery bios and larger thematic essays to an interactive map of 19th century New York. As the establishment of galleries in the 19th century set the stage for an art boom in New York in the following decades and centuries, we hope our user-friendly visualization and compilation of information about galleries and dealers will significantly contribute to scholarship on this topic. We also think this would provide another way of viewing information, perhaps a more legible one for non-art historians and artists.
Given the short time frame we had to work on this project and our limited access to sources due to the coronavirus pandemic, our work is process-oriented in order to lay the framework for a project that can be continued and embellished further by other Bowdoin students, Getty researchers, and other contributors. The biographies are the bulk of our research, and the map and essays are the additional components of our project.