In an era when American artists lacked the respect of their European counterparts and women were not expected to pursue careers, Edith Gregor Halpert burst onto the fledgling New York gallery scene, defying all cultural and societal rules. In 1926, Halpert, just twenty-six years old, opened one of the first art galleries in Greenwich Village and set about turning the art world upside down. Her Downtown Gallery, which she ran for forty-four years, laid the groundwork for the art market’s modern era and its methods of aggressive promotion and sales tactics. Halpert cultivated the most illustrious art collectors of the day, invented the market for American folk art, and pushed the first group of American artists working in a modern vernacular into the history books, including Stuart Davis, Jacob Lawrence, Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, and Ben Shahn. Despite all this, Edith Halpert herself has been lost to history. Until now.

In The Girl with the Gallery, journalist Lindsay Pollock brings Halpert and her era vividly back to life. Pollock traces Halpert’s life through her roots as a penniless Jewish immigrant; her advantageous marriage to artist Sam Halpert; the founding of The Downtown Gallery and her relentless pursuit of the top American artists; her role as the Art Dealers Association of America’s; the New Deal’s Public Works Art Project, the grand opening of Radio City Music Hall; and Jacob Lawrence’s groundbreaking first show; as well as her eventual decline into illness. The result is a gorgeous portrait of a daring, charming woman who made it her mission to fight for American art and artists. This is biography at its finest, an unforgettable life story of class, money, vanity, jealousy, bitterness, and, above all, art.

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Publisher: PublicAffairs Books

Praise for The Girl with the Gallery

“Just in time, before collective memory falters, Lindsay Pollock has given us this lively, illuminating, and wonderfully light-hearted portrait of Edith Halpert, one of the great characters in the story of American art.”

“Edith Halpert arrived in New York in 1906, a penniless Jewish immigrant from Odessa. She became one of those indomitable women who refuse to let circumstance circumscribe their worlds. In 1926, she founded the Downtown Gallery, which helped give modern American art a voice—and a paycheck. Lindsay Pollock vividly brings Halpert, once in danger of being forgotten, back to life. Her book is an essential act of historical recovery.”

“The art dealer Edith Gregor Halpert liked to say she was a little girl from Odessa who got her start as an entrepreneur selling penny candy. Fleeing immigrant life in Harlem, Halpert sought refuge in art classes and in the bohemian world south of Fourteenth Street. In 1926, after it became clear that she was better at spotting good art than at making it, she opened a gallery. The Downtown Gallery soon emerged as an influential dealer, stocking the collections of wealthy patrons with works by American artists like Stuart Davis and Max Weber. Pollock’s amply researched account hesitates to go deeper than an animated recitation of Halpert’s inventive business tactics, but it successfully conveys the boldness of a woman who aggressively championed her artists, buoying them through personal crises and the Depression, and helping them win the respect of the Eurocentric New York art world.”

“She was only 26 years old, an immigrant, and a woman, but none of this stopped Edith Gregor Halpert from founding the Downtown Gallery in Greenwich Village in 1926 and becoming a visionary champion of the American avant-garde. In The Girl with the Gallery art journalist Lindsay Pollock tells how Halpert, who arrived in New York from Russian at the age of 6, went on to change-and some would say even shape-the American art scene of her time.”

“…Pollock has built up a picture of a brilliant businesswoman who was a prime orchestrator of the increasing success of avant-garde American art in the first half of the 20th century…[She leaves us] with a vivid picture of this proud woman, who displayed a ruthless commercial drive better suited to the Thatcherite era than her own…It is to everyone’s shame that Halpert died lonely and senile, having too often fallen out with artists who didn’t understand what she’d done for them, as she, until now, fell out with modern memory.”

“Sound, informative…In this polished work, Pollock emphasizes Halpert’s steely business mind and her unflagging commitment to bringing art to ‘Mr. and Mrs. America.’ A significant contribution to American beaux arts.”

“The Girl with the Gallery is an essential text on the New York art world of the 1920s through the 1960s, as well as a definitive account of a fascinating American woman.”

“Without visionary art dealers, radical artists would remain starving artists. Edith Gregor Halpert was one such champion. In her resounding first book, art journalist Pollock tells for the first time the story of Halpert’s life, a tale of conviction and chutzpah that is by turns charming, historically significant, and sad. Born in Odessa in 1900, Edith grew up in New York mad about art and utterly disinterested in convention. Determined to help struggling artists, this trailblazer traded on her beauty, moxie, keen eye, and entrepreneurial genius to open the first modern and politically charged art gallery in Greenwich Village in 1926. Advocating for the likes of Stuart Davis, Charles Sheeler, and Jacob Lawrence, Edith formed an unlikely but fruitful alliance with art lover Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. Instrumental in fostering serious appreciation for American folk art, Edith discovered many overlooked masterpieces, including the paintings of Edward Hicks. She also worked herself into exhaustion, especially during the Depression years, never found love, and infuriated many. Framed by a fresh and lively chronicle of the coalescence of New York’s art world, Pollock’s riveting portrait celebrates an inspired defender of artistic freedom.”

“A uniquely American story: a plucky heroine escapes Russia with her parents, grows up in New York poverty and ends up owning one of the most influential and successful art galleries of the 20th century, one that virtually created the market for American art… Most interesting in Pollock’s account are Halpert’s difficult interactions with others in the business and with her artists, particularly Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe. It’s surprising that Halpert, who paved the way for women in a male-dominated field, is so little known today; this book is long overdue.”

“Art-world revolutionary Edith Gregor Halpert is the intriguing subject of The Girl with the Gallery, in which Lindsay Pollock recounts how an intrepid 26-year-old from Odessa became a champion of American modernism.”

“Sitting squarely in the middle and always trying to tinker with the balance of things was the enigmatic, beautiful, feisty, often brilliant, but always larger-than-life Halpert. How she accomplished all she did with the many players who floated in and out of her gallery, became her friends, lovers, and enemies but never her confidantes is the subject of an engaging new biography…”

“For 40 years, Edith Gregor Halpert ran the Downtown Gallery on West 13th Street in New York, one of the first and most influential galleries of the pioneers of Modern art.”

“Edith Gregor Halpert was a force of nature: A strikingly beautiful, charismatic woman with innate entrepreneurial gifts, she brushed off her humble origins as a poor Russian Jewish immigrant in New York City to make her mark in the 20th century art world.”