By Corey Kilgannon
New York Times
Jan. 27, 2024

“Arlene wanted her legacy kept alive in museums or shows or galleries,” Dara Gottfried said during a recent visit to the locker. “Gilbert (her brother) and I wanted to honor her wishes to have her work shared with the world, so it could live on forever.”

Over the years, her output accumulated in her studio apartment in the Westbeth houses, the subsidized artists’ colony in the West Village that was once home to the photographer Diane Arbus, to whom Ms. Gottfried has been compared.

“It sat in her apartment like an elephant in the room,” said Ms. Gottfried’s gallerist, Daniel Cooney. “She didn’t want to deal with it. She didn’t know where to start.”

Sean Corcoran, senior curator of prints and photographs at the Museum of the City of New York, called Ms. Gottfried’s archive “a unique and important collection, with both artistic value and historical and social relevance to a moment in time in New York City.”

“Arlene liked the old New York before it got fancy and rich,” Karen Gottfried, her sister, said. “There were honestly a lot more oddballs around, everyone dressed with individuality and she liked all that. She didn’t like fancy. She liked the funky stuff.”

“They (Gilbert Gottfried brother) had a mutual respect for each other — they supported each other,” said his wife, Dara Gottfried. “I think there’s a lot of parallel between them, the way they grew up and looked at the world. Both were real artists and cared about the art and not the glitz and glamour of show business.”

Adam Reid, a writer and director who was friends with Mr. Gottfried, said the siblings’ similar artistic expression was largely formed during their austere childhood.

“They processed the trauma of growing up in poverty during some of the city’s darkest eras and both found a way to find light in the darkness and turn their pain into bold, creative expression,” he said.

Links:
New York Times Article
Daniel Cooney Fine Art
Westbeth In Memoriam Arlene Gottfried
Home Page Photo: Arlene Gottfried, in a Polaroid self portrait. Sara Messinger for The New York Times