January 31, 2025 -May 25, 2025

The New York Historical
Pam and Scott Schaffer Gallery
170 Central Park West at 77th St
New York, NY

“My mother used to say ‘Arlene—just don’t wander!’ Then I started wandering, but I got a camera because it gave it a little more meaning…a life of wandering is really what it all is.”

With that imperative, Arlene Gottfried wandered throughout New York City and photographed everything and everyone that she encountered, from Harlem’s gospel singers to the nightclubs in Midtown, the drug dens on the Lower East Side, and the crowds on Coney Island in the summertime. This exhibition of more than 30 works celebrates the recent acquisition—thanks to the generosity of Trustee Sally Klingenstein Martell and the Gottfried estate—of Gottfried’s photographs taken during the last decades of the 20th century and first years of the 21st. The show is on view in the Pam & Scott Schafler Gallery through May 25 and brings much deserved attention to this understudied photographer’s honest, sensitive, and sometimes searing images of New York City’s population.

Curated by Mariyyn S Kushner

More about the Exhibition and to buy tickets: Click Here