Photo Essay - The Downtown Collection

via Flickr

 Tucked away on the third floor of 70 Washington Square is the Fales Library – home to volumes of rare books and manuscript materials. One of its many gems is the Downtown Collection. It was established in 1994 by the sociable and savvy Marvin Taylor, the director of Fales Library and Special Collections at New York University.

The Downtown Collection documents the New York art scene from 1975 to the present. At the time, art forms of all kinds were produced: music, literature, performance, theater, film, dance, photography and more. The Downtown Collection gathers all of these outputs and preserves the artistic products of cultural movements. The continuously growing collection contains printed items from punk magazines to posters, from the diary of Patti Smith to the papers of Richard Hell.

Currently, “A Sanctuary for the Arts: Judson Memorial Church and the Avant-Garde, 1954-1977” is on exhibit through January 7, 2011. It collects the creative jewels from Judson Memorial Church’s basement; you’ll find a balled up flag from the People’s Flag Show and footage from Carolee Schneemann’s Meat Joy. In this performance piece, you’ll witness bodies being dragged around and sculpted, dead chickens and fish being shoved down underwear and in people’s mouths.

 

As Taylor put it, the Downtown Collection contains the things “that never made it uptown.”

 And so, I leave you with a do-it-yourself protest song. After all, DIY is the mantra of punk music.