page_title: Grand Central Art Galleries
section_title: Exhibitions and Events
hierarchical_section_title: Grand Central Art Galleries / Exhibitions and Events
caption_attribution_description: English: Artist Malvina Hoffman; Stanley Field, director and the nephew of the founder of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago; and actress Mary Pickford at the 1934 opening of Hoffman's Grand Central Art Galleries exhibition "The Races of Man."
context_page_description: The Grand Central Art Galleries were the exhibition and administrative space of the nonprofit Painters and Sculptors Gallery Association, an artists' cooperative established in 1922 by Walter Leighton Clark together with John Singer Sargent, Edmund Greacen, and others. Artists closely associated with the Grand Central Art Galleries included Hovsep Pushman, George de Forest Brush, and especially Sargent, whose posthumous show took place there in 1928.
  The Galleries were active from 1923 until 1994. For 29 years they were located on the sixth floor of Grand Central Terminal. At their 1923 opening, the Galleries covered 14,000 square feet and offered nine exhibition areas and a reception room, described as "the largest sales gallery of art in the world." In 1958 the Galleries moved to the second floor of the Biltmore Hotel, where they had six exhibition rooms and an office. They remained at the Biltmore for 23 years, until it was converted into an office building. The Galleries then moved to 24 West 57th Street, where they remained until they ceased activity.
  In addition to their main offices, the Grand Central Art Galleries directed a number of other enterprises.
context_section_description: Throughout its history the Grand Central Art Galleries regularly held exhibitions large and small. Whether events were free or admission was charged, they helped to publicize the Galleries as well as advance the cause of the arts they championed.
  March 23, 1923: "Exhibition of Paintings and Sculptures Contributed by the Founders of the Galleries." The Grand Central Art Galleries' opening exhibition featured 170 works, including Sargent's The Artist Sketching, Daffodils by Charles W. Hawthorne, Leslie Buswell by Cecilia Beaux, and Mr. Alleyne Ireland by Ernest Ipsen. Sculpture included Spirit of Life by Daniel Chester French, Summer's Freeze by Herbert Adams, Diana by Robert Aitken, and Roosevelt by Frederic MacMonnies.
  February 23, 1924: "Retrospective Exhibition of the Important Works of John Singer Sargent. The exhibition featured 60 oil paintings, including Portrait of Mrs. H.F. Hadden (1878), The Lady with the Rose (1882), Portrait of Mrs. Fiske Warren and Daughter (1903), and Lake O'Hara (1916) as well as 12 watercolors. The catalog noted that exhibition was a benefit for the endowment fund of the Painters and Sculptors Gallery Association, "with which Mr. Sargent has from the beginning been in active cooperation."
  January 11, 1925: More than 4,000 people attended the Galleries' "Retrospective Edition of British Paintings," which was organized under the auspices of the English-Speaking Union. Paintings ranged from the middle of the 18th century to present day, including works by William Hogarth from the "Rake's Progress" series, portraits by Joshua Reynolds, a landscape by Thomas Gainsborough, and a large canvas by Alfred Munnings, H.R.H., the Prince of Wales. John Singer Sargent showed 10 paintings, including his portrait of Ena Wertheimer, A Vele Gonfie; Troops Going Into Line; Head of a Bedouin Arab; and a portrait of Lady Sassoon.
  1926: "Modern Italian Art," an exhibition organized under the auspices of the Italian American Society with a wide range of recent works by Italian masters. Included Medardo Rosso's Ecce Puer, Adolfo Wildt's The Virgin, Giovanni Boldini's Portrait of Whistler, and Amedeo Modigliani's Madame Modigiliani.
  March 7, 1926: The Galleries were the site of the Carnegie International Exhibition, the first time it had ever been held outside Pittsburgh. The event featured works of artists from 12 countries. More than 500 paintings selected for the show by Homer Saint-Gaudens, son of Augustus Saint-Gaudens and subject of an 1890 portrait by Sargent. Separate rooms were dedicated to each country, and because of their number, the exhibition was divided into the exhibition into two parts. The first included America, Belgium,  Germany, Holland, Italy, Poland, Russia, and Spain; the second showed works from Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, Great Britain, and Sweden.
  November 13, 1926:* A film-related "symposium and supper" was held at the Galleries. Organized together with the Film Bureau, "a volunteer organization for the promotion of the best pictures," the event took place in the Sargent Room. Examples of motion pictures from several countries, including Russia's Moscow Art Players, were shown. Tickets were $5 (the equivalent of $60 in 2008), and attendees were encouraged to bring their own amateur works.
  February 14, 1928: "Exhibition of Drawings by John Singer Sargent." Sargent died in 1925, and three years later the Grand Central Art Galleries organized a posthumous exhibition of previously unseen sketches and drawings from throughout his career. The materials were found in the artist's London studio after his death, and Sargent's sisters chose Walter Leighton Clark to go through them. Clark selected several hundred works for consideration. They included early drawings made by Sargent when he was a teenager and experiments with watercolors from 1872, as well as preparatory sketches for celebrated paintings such as Madame X, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Gassed, now in the National Gallery in London. Also shown were preparatory studies for the murals in both the Boston Public Library 
caption: Artist Malvina Hoffman; Stanley Field, director and the nephew of the founder of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago; and actress Mary Pickford; at the 1934 opening of Hoffman's Grand Central Art Galleries exhibition "The Races of Man."
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