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Red Grooms’ dazzling installation, was created as a working gift shop for the Hudson River Museum in 1979. After extensive conservation, this beloved Westchester landmark has been reinstalled in its own gallery. The Bookstore incorporates many of the themes that run through Grooms’ best work: the marriage of art and commerce, the clash of high and low, colorful New York characters, and an inviting three-dimensional space that envelops and transports the viewer. The Bookstore deftly joins two favorite haunts of New York City booklover – the lively, oldest secondhand bookshop in NYC, the Isaac Mendoza Book Company, and the patrician Morgan Library – into a work of art.
In terms of materials, The Bookstore was one of a limited number of pieces in which Grooms incorporated vinyl figures. The figures are painted from the inside, a technique inspired by medieval glass-painting techniques, and then are stuffed and sewn. Tens of thousands of visitors passed through The Bookstore, and, embraced by its environment, it inevitably began to suffer ravages caused by its popularity. Plans were developed to restore the work and Grooms enthusiastically approved the conservation efforts and changes, which include altering the position of the two  entrances to fit new gallery space, the creation of a central island that incorporated the original vinyl patrons, and the design of a painted floor. Grooms remains cautious of making too many changes to a piece that reflects a vision of New York in the 1970s, already passing into history. “An artist can overwork a thing – you can ruin the delicacy of a past moment very easily …I think it’s better to keep it like it was – primitive in that way.” |
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A recent gift to the Hudson River Museum, it was created by dollhouse enthusiast Mark O’Banks over the course of a decade. Some of the architectural elements of the 26-room dollhouse were suggested by nineteenth-century houses in the Hudson Valley as well as sites around Washington, D.C.
The façade of the central portion is loosely based on the Hudson River estate, Staatsburg, the Ogden Mills House. The orange and green color scheme on the high Victorian addition is based on Wilderstein, the family home of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s personal secretary. The concept of the lantern comes from George Washington’s home Mount Vernon. The roof line in the French style was drawn from buildings on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, D.C. O’Banks furnished the house with found objects, rugs that he designed and were executed by his mother, and one of a kind, custom-made pieces. Nybelwyck Hall is filled with allusions to O’Banks’ friends, family, and special moments woven into the story of the dollhouse’s fictional Van Nybelwyck family.
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