On Tuesday night, in the historic High Line Hotel’s refectory, under a sweeping gilt roof, two generations of New York bookmakers collided at the Printed Matter 50th anniversary gala. Over the years, the nonprofit has grown to be many things: a bookstore, an exhibition space, an organizer of one of the world’s largest book fairs. But at its heart, it is and will always be a resource to help artists produce books and share their work outside of the traditional museum and gallery circuit.
Founded in 1976 in Tribeca by a venerable group of iconoclastic downtown figures including Sol LeWitt, Pat Steir, and critic Lucy Lippard, Printed Matter quickly drew a cavalcade of boundary-pushing collaborators who helped develop the art book as a new medium in and of itself. In fact, Printed Matter’s annual catalogs of recently released artist books became their own collector’s items, often designed by artists themselves including Don Chiappinelli and Barbara Kruger. Even the bookstore’s windows—first in Tribeca now at its current location in Chelsea—have operated as gallery walls for Jenny Holzer (1979), Richard Prince (1980), Suzanne Lacy (1982), the Guerilla Girls (1986), and Carmen Winant (2015).
Now, at 50 years, the organization looked backwards before toasting to 50 more.
The Scene: After an introduction from Printed Matter Board President and Co-Chair Elyse Benenson, artist Joan Jonas paid tribute to Pat Steir with a frank and moving speech. She was even accompanied by a video of the two of them raising a ruckus in the Financial District in 1976.
The Occasion: A speech honoring one of Printed Matter’s newer collaborators, Yusuf Hassan of BlackMass Publishing, preceded the night’s main honoree, Ed Ruscha, taking the stage. Ruscha extolled the value of artist books by reflecting on his memories of artist Lawrence Weiner, with whom he created an artist book in the late 1970s.
The Locale: Guests convened at the historic High Line Hotel with its red brick gated Parisian courtyard and dined at long tables inside the hotel’s Gothic refectory.
The Crowd: The art world showed out in spades with esteemed artists and writers such as Michael Heizer, Glenn Ligon, Tauba Auerbach, Claudia Rankine, Neil Jenney, Lele Saveri, Martha Wilson, Derek Fordjour, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, and Adam Pendleton. Museum directors and gallerists swapped stories over tall glasses of wine, including MoMA Director Christophe Cherix, Larry Gagosian, MoMA PS1 Director Connie Butler, and dealer Carolina Nitsch.
The Entertainment: Also heralding its 50th anniversary this year will be the Robert Wilson and Philip Glass opera Einstein on the Beach. To celebrate, original Einstein on the Beach performer Lucinda Childs and Anton Batagov performed selected work from the show.
Parting Gift: Guests left with bags filled with unique ephemera, including pins with Ed Ruscha’s original catalog numbers and text from his Printed Matter books, as well as handmade leather bookmarks.
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