Updates from the Archive, Spring 2024
Digitizing projects, conversations with legacy foundations, and more
Looking Back, Looking Forward: Building a Legacy with Community Support
Looking Back
Thirteen years after Alvin Baltrop's first solo exhibition at Third Streaming in 2011, his work continues to gain recognition. Best known for vividly capturing New York City’s waterfront subcultures, Baltrop’s photographs showcase the urban decay and the vibrant lives of the LGBTQIA+ communities and others living at the margins of society from the late 1960s-80s. The exposure began with Douglas Crimp’s 2008 Artforum article when one of Baltrop’s iconic images landed on the cover of the magazine. It was further boosted by Baltrop’s first museum survey in 2012, "Alvin Baltrop: Dreams into Glass," curated by Valerie Cassel Oliver at the Contemporary Art Museum Houston, and the publication that accompanied it. These milestones led to additional opportunities and critical support from a community of dedicated artists, curators, writers, and collectors who recognized the value of the work. And, ultimately to representation by Galerie Buchholz, one of the most relevant contemporary art galleries globally.
Looking Forward
We are now embarking on a major legacy project to digitize over forty thousand of Baltrop’s negatives, including many previously unseen images. This effort, in collaboration with Tom Powell Imaging, industry experts in digital archival image capture and production, will preserve and make Baltrop’s work accessible for research, licensing, and more. You can support this project by purchasing items from the ALTU x Alvin Baltrop limited edition capsule—scroll down for more info. Your contribution will directly aid in the preservation and accessibility of Baltrop’s impactful legacy. Without your support, we wouldn’t have reached so many major milestones. There is still so much more to do.
With gratitude,
Yona Backer
Creating Impact: Artist Legacies in the 21st Century
In March, Yona Backer joined Anthony Huberman, Director of Giorno Poetry Systems, Kéwé Lô, Director of Kehinde Wiley’s organization Black Rock Senegal, and Elizabeth Smith, Executive Director of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation for a panel discussion moderated by James Bewley, Senior Program Officer at the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, at the Hammer Museum.
You can watch a recording of the panel to hear more about the behind-the-scenes operations and planning of the Alvin Baltrop archive.
ALTU x Alvin Baltrop Collaboration
Our collaboration with Joseph Altuzarra’s genderful brand, ALTU, launched last winter, supports the Alvin Baltrop Digitization Project. A select number of pieces from the ALTU x Alvin Baltrop Capsule are available for sale through Third Streaming. They include limited edition hooded sweatshirts and logo T-shirts with printed artwork by Alvin Baltrop. Proceeds will be allocated towards the preservation of the artist’s negatives. The logo T-shirts are available at $95 and hoodies at $250, plus tax and shipping. Each piece features a large print of Baltrop’s work and custom embroidered ALTU logo on high-quality cotton (sourced sustainably).
If you would like to purchase any of these iconic pieces to your collection, please email us at info@thirdstreaming.com.
Upcoming Exhibitions
Shifting Shorelines: Art, Industry, and Ecology Along the Hudson River | Wallach Art Gallery | Opens October 4, 2024
Shifting Shorelines actively engages in a critical dialogue with images of the river as a natural paradise by showing these seemingly hegemonic portrayals alongside contrasting representations that consider the exploitation and environmental damage to the river that has accompanied many of the human endeavors along its shores. In so doing it offers a counter reading of the received art historical narratives—narratives overwhelmingly grounded on the work of white male artists—that aims for a rich and complex understanding of the legacy, life, and livelihoods along the river informed by the voices and experiences of a broad range of creators.
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For more information on Alvin Baltrop, please visit our website. Please contact Galerie Buchholz for any sales related inquiries.