The Houston Bowery wall, concealed. (Photo: Nicole Disser)
Whole Foods Market® Bowery, as it’s written in a press release, is opening a pop-up gallery featuring “LES-centric artwork” on its second-floor mezzanine, in partnership with the LES BID. Artists are invited to propose art “based on a combination of past and present themes that relate to the Lower East Side”; five winners will be selected to have their work displayed for a month, starting with a preview during the annual LES Opening Night: Art + Fashion on Sept. 7.
Last time Whole Foods Market® Bowery hosted an exhibit dedicated to LES history, its curator Rob Hollander (founder of No 7-Eleven) accused local bloggers of responding to “a Bowery history exhibit at the Whole Foods that started gentrification on the Bowery” in a “superficial and irrelevant, self-serving and masturbatory” way that focused on “the easy, appealing, fun irony of the exhibit’s venue.” He went on to write, “Our LES bloggers are full of complaints that aren’t helpful.”
Will this exhibit touch off that kind of tension? Probs not (Hollander later apologized to EV Grieve for the harsh words) — we just wanted to have some fun with the headline. Really all that’ll happen is there’ll be some more art on the corner of Bowery and Houston to make up for the construction plywood that recently went up around the famed mural wall, and to add to the great exhibition of posters from the Center For Puerto Rican Studies archive at First Street Green.
In the interest of irony, we’d love to see Mars Bar artist submit something.