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‘WHEN ART WORLDS COLLIDE — THE 60S’ OPENS AT WOODWARD GALLERY MAY 17

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NEW YORK CITY — Woodward Gallery will reopen its new ground floor location with the inaugural exhibition, “When Art Worlds Collide — The 60s,” on view May 17–July 14. An opening reception will be May 17 from 6 to 8 pm.

The exhibition will reexamine the collision of art theory and ideas in New York City around the Bowery and the Lower East Side. It features many of the major artists who contributed to the explosive change in art of the 1960s.

Cold War threats, assassinations, protests, war, discrimination and the race for space emotionally enveloped the artistic psyche. These overwhelming worldwide changes especially permeated the New York artistic energy and influenced the shift towards a new view in art.

The soul of the Abstract Expressionists was eviscerated by a reduced form of art, emerging with superficiality and detachment. The New York School artists’ decades-long commitment and suffering for idealism was attacked by what they perceived as a lightweight commercialism approaching.

Woodward Gallery will unite the artists’ work and bring them back to their downtown Lower East Side Manhattan roots: Berenice Abbott, Norman Bluhm, Alexander Calder, Willem de Kooning, Jim Dine, David Hickney, Dennis Hopper, Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Alex Katz, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Motherwell, Georgia O’Keeffe, Claes Oldenbury and others.

Woodward Gallery is at 133 Eldridge Street, ground floor. For information, 212-966-3411 or www.woodwardgallery.net