Helen Shlien Gallery records
name: label: Creator
content: Helen Shlien Gallery (Boston, Mass.)
label: Names
content: Shlien, Helen, 1919-2021
topic: label: Topic
content: Women art dealers
label: Topic
content: Performance art
label: Topic
content: Installations (Art)
acqinfo: label: Provenance
content: Donated 1994 by gallery owner Helen Shlien.
creator: label: Creator
content: Helen Shlien Gallery (Boston, Mass.)
bioghist: label: Biographical / Historical
content: Helen Snower Shlien (1919-2021) was an art dealer and curator who owned galleries in Chicago and Boston. Shlien was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and attended Sarah Lawrence College and the University of Chicago. She founded her first art gallery in Chicago in the 1960s, selling prints by artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Jim Dine. She moved to Boston with her husband in 1967, where she began working as an assistant curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art. Shlien then served as director of the Boston Visual Artists Union from 1974 to 1976. With a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, she compiled and published the book Artist associations in the U.S.A.: a descriptive directory in 1977. 

In 1978, Shlien opened the Helen Shlien Gallery at 348-352 Congress Street in Boston's Fort Point Channel area. The gallery was notable for hosting performance art, installations, and other experimental works. Artists who performed or exhibited at the Helen Shlien Gallery include Jack Wolfe, Ewa Kuryluk, Jill Slosburg-Ackerman, Lois Tarlow, Jo Ann Rothschild, Harris and Ros Barron, Roger Kizik, and the Mobius Artists Group, among others. In 1983, Shlien moved her gallery from the Fort Point neighborhood to a location on 14 Newbury Street in Back Bay. Shlien helped members of the Mobius Artists Group obtain a lease to use the gallery's former location on Congress Street as a much-needed performance space. Shlien closed her gallery in 1985 and went on to work as an independent curator for many years. Boston Globe reporter Christine Temin referred to Shlien as "one of Boston's foremost champions of experimental art."
function: label: Function
content: Art galleries, Commercial -- Massachusetts
physdesc: label: Extent
content: 4 Linear Feet
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1978-1983
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Archives of American Art
identifier: label: Identifier
content: AAA.heleshli
objectType: label: Type
content: Collection descriptions
label: Type
content: Archival materials
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: Correspondence, sales records, exhibition records, artist's biographical statements; and artists' files, containing correspondence, slides and photographs of works of art and exhibition material.