Third Streaming: a results-focused, purpose-driven consultancy, November 2022

Updates from our work with The Alvin Baltrop Trust

Nov 21, 2022

Dear Friends,

It has been awhile since our last newsletter and much has happened in the interim that I am eager to share with you. We have accomplished major milestones in our preservation of Alvin Baltrop’s work and championship of his legacy.

Over the years, we received hundreds of vintage prints and, most recently, thousands of Alvin Baltrop’s negatives from the Trust. They came to us in torn envelopes and old shopping bags, which we transferred to archival and climate-controlled storage. Nothing from the collection had ever been archived or catalogued, nor was there a database or inventory system in place. Now the entire collection of vintage prints has been properly catalogued and annotated. And, we are in the process of digitizing the over 40,000 negatives of mostly never-before-seen images. This work is being done by Tom Powell Imaging. All of these initiatives support the ongoing preservation and legacy of Baltrop’s oeuvre as well as enable curators, scholars, and artists inspired by his work to build on the research and critical interpretation of Baltrop’s legacy.

Further, I am thrilled to announce that Lana Pochiro and Randa Elsayed have joined our team. They have been cataloguing and digitizing the vintage prints, as well as the publications and articles that have been published to date, with the goal of making all this rich material accessible to the public.

Represented by Galerie Buchholz, one of the most prestigious contemporary art galleries in the world, and as a member of the Aspen Institute’s Artist Endowed Foundation Initiative, we have formed important partnerships to help promote Alvin Baltrop’s work and make it accessible to an ever-expanding global audience.

Baltrop’s photographs have been included in many key exhibitions around the globe and recently acquired by the Getty Museum and UCLA’s Hammer Museum in Los Angeles as well as the National Museum of Art in Oslo, Norway, among other internationally recognized institutions. We are working with Art Resources and Artists Rights Society on licensing projects, including designs with the poet John Keene and musicians Emily Wells and Anohni. With Skira, we co-published, The Life and Times of Alvin Baltrop, a seminal publication featuring over 120 images—edited by Antonio Sergio Bessa with critical essays by Douglas Crimp, Adrienne Edwards, Allen Frame and Mia Kang.

As always, thank you for your support and interest in Alvin Baltrop’s work. We invite you to join us in the events highlighted below. Alvin Baltrop’s legacy centers all that we do, and we are excited to share more news with you soon.

Sincerely,

Yona Backer

Current and Upcoming Events

Art Cologne

November 16, 2022 – November 21, 2022 | Koelnmesse, Cologne, Hall 11.2, Booth B-119

Art Basel Miami Beach

December 1, 2022 – December 3, 2022 | Miami Beach Convention Center

Alvin Baltrop, Untitled [from The Piers series], n.d. (1975-86), gelatin silver prints. Courtesy of the Alvin Baltrop Trust Ⓒ 2010, Third Streaming, New York and Galerie Buchholz. Photo: Kilian Bannwart

A Look Back on the Year

Bells

September 24, 2022 - October 29, 2022 | Galerie Buchholz, Köln

View the work of Alvin Baltrop, included alongside Lutz Bacher, Romare Bearden, Matt Browning, Charles Burchfield, Caleb Considine, Michaela Eichwald, Julian Göthe, Samuel Jeffery, Sergej Jensen, Klein, Tonio Kröner, Mark Leckey, Norman Lewis, Diego Marcon, Jasper Marsalis, Henrik Olesen, Vera Palme, Jack Smith, Josef Strau, Wolfgang Tillmans, Stewart Uoo, Alice Valenti, Martin Wong.

Gazed and Confused

January 21, 2022 - March 12, 2022 | Last Tango, Zurich

“Exactly fifty years ago in January 1972 the BBC series Ways of Seeing was aired. In the second episode ‘Women and Art’ author and artist John Berger examined the male gaze in western visual culture, be it traditional painting or advertising. Before its widespread use in feminist theory Berger used the term of the male gaze to critique how the gaze was inextricably linked to power. He spoke of women watching themselves being looked at. Soon after in 1975 feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey in her seminal essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ spoke of to-be-looked-at-ness and Freud’s scopophilia addressing female sexual objectification in traditional cinema. Taking this as a starting point, Gazed and Confused is an exhibition in two chapters that tackles the complex, broad and challenging topic of the gaze. It brings together a multifaceted look at the gaze and explores themes such as gaze agency, the imperial gaze, the homosexual gaze, the artist’s gaze, sexism, and voyeurism.” (Read more here)

Alvin Baltrop

December 1, 2021 - January 22, 2022 | Modern Art, London

“But pleasure and the sensuality of bodies are countered with scenes of poverty, destitution and even death, pictured for instance, in a group of police officers surrounding a washed up corpse, or a young man in a tent, perhaps homeless. A significant historical document into a period of New York’s cultural subcultural and political history, the piers photographs are also glimpses into moments of intimacy and community made visible through Baltrop’s artistic conviction, vision and rigor.”

In the News

The New, New Black Gay Renaissance, Literary Hub

Kapp Kapp on Alvin Baltrop, Interview Magazine

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For more information on Alvin Baltrop, please visit our website. Please contact Galerie Buchholz for any sales related inquiries.

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