SMITHSONIAN’S ARCHIVES OF AMERICAN ART ACQUIRES RECORDS OF SOHO GALLERY OK HARRIS

The Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art will be acquiring the complete archives of Soho gallery OK Harris Works of Art, according to Alanna Martinez in The Observer. The gallery’s records span over half a century.

Founded in 1969 by Ivan C. Karp—who first worked as codirector at Leo Castelli Gallery—OK Harris was crucial in the early careers of artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, and John Chamberlain. It opened its doors at 469 West Broadway, and later moved to 383 West Broadway, and built a reputation for showing everything from photography to site-specific installation, mounting up to six solo shows at once within its 10,000-square-foot ground-floor-level space.

Karp’s wife Marilynn Gelfmann Karp later became the gallery’s director when Karp passed away, heading the space with the help of the couple’s son Ethan until last year—at which point she donated the gallery’s records to the Smithsonian. In all, the Ivan C. Karp papers and OK Harris Works of Art gallery records measure over eighty linear feet. In addition to featuring personal correspondences and exhibition files, the records also include thirty-nine journals by Karp completed over six decades.