Red Grooms Is Back!
Return of Red Grooms’ Bookstore
and a New Exhibition that Shows His Path to Creativity
February 9 - May 25

One of America’s major artists with a truly popular following, Red Grooms is returning to the Hudson River Museum thirty years after his creation of The Bookstore – a gem in the Museum’s permanent collection that has become an artistic emblem of Westchester County.

Red Grooms appears at the Hudson River Museum with a reinstallation of The Bookstore, restored with the artist’s vision, and a new exhibition –In the Studio-- on view from February 9 through May 25.

The worlds that inspire Grooms stretch from silent movies to dance halls to America’s urban canyons and first colonies. Red Grooms grew up in Nashville and began his career as an actor. His sense of theater is integral to the multimedia experience he creates in sculpture, paintings, and films. Now a quintessential New York artist, Grooms shows the city’s people and their neighborhoods with both wit and acute comment. His commentary has endeared The Bookstore to thousands since its installation at the Hudson River Museum in 1979.

True to the larger-than-life environmental sculptures that brought Pop Artist Grooms attention around the globe, The Bookstore deftly joins two favorite haunts for New York City book lovers—the lively and oldest secondhand bookshop in New York City, the Isaac Mendoza Book Company, and the patrician Morgan Library. At its creation, Grooms called The Bookstore “the most premeditated piece I’ve done.” Made to function as the Museum’s gift shop, it opened to critical acclaim. David Shirey, NY Times, noted the sculpture “…titillating our hearts and tititvating our minds to superb visual comedy.” The sculpture’s flamboyantly colored interior is crowded with life-size, stuffed vinyl figures, of people who go to library reading rooms as well as bargain bookstores and over 5,000 painted books, whose ironic titles reflect actual books. Clerks, browsers, ghosts, and mice mingle with portraits of Grooms’ construction assistants. The Bookstore was funded by a Museum Purchase Plan Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts with matching funds from the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, the Sarah I. Schieffelin Residuary Trust, Wells, Rich, Green, Inc., Gestetner Corporation, and IBM Corporation. As the museum embarked on plans to construct a new lobby, shifting visitor flow throughout the building, plans were considered to relocate the piece to a new dedicated gallery. Grooms approved the major conservation efforts and changes to the work that included altering the position of the two entrances to fit the new gallery space, the creation of a new central island, which incorporated the original vinyl patrons, and the design for a new painted floor to replace the red wall-to-wall carpeting adapted from the original space. The conservation work was executed by Tom Burkhardt, who oversaw the re-installation.

Grooms has had scores of exhibitions over his career but In the Studio is the first to explore not only his triumphs, such as his most famous work Ruckus Manhattan, but also Grooms’ path to creativity that includes his artistic concepts too prohibitive to execute, such as the plans for a huge musical The Divine Sarah, a life of the actress Sarah Burnhardt, for which Grooms created nine charming stage sets-- all on view in the exhibition.

Grooms brings vision to visible reality with a happy combination of meticulous planning and preliminary studies in the form of miniature paper, clay and wood models, or maquettes. Ranging from a few inches to nearly eight feet, the models are made quickly, the artist’s fingerprints still on them, others finished pieces. The most elaborate illuminate, play music, and move.

Grooms knows the power of his models, comparing them to the allure of dollhouses that capture a world in miniature and entice the viewer in to another world. Among the models appearing the show In the Studio that have never been seen before are a miniature ticker tape parade featuring Mayor LaGaurdia; Peacable Kingdom; a large-scale model of dozens of different animals decorating a giant “tree of life;” Snake Charmer, part of a design for a proposed circus series; a model for the Iowa State Fair, featuring the famed “butter cow” and Flamenco Dancers, Grooms’ latest work that is now evolving into a design for a huge sculpture only to be imagined.

Red Grooms, the artist, is hard to categorize. He works with all kinds of materials including paper, plaster, wood, found objects, and cardboard. About his work, he says he has "a giddy sense of reality." He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, and the New School of Social Research in New York. In Provincetown, Massachusetts, he was a student of Abstract Expressionist Hans Hoffman. In New York, he was a participant in "Happenings" or performance art, along with Jim Dine, Allan Kaprow, and Claes Oldenburg. For Grooms, this activity was an outgrowth of his interest in the pageantry of the circus, something that has intrigued him throughout his life.

Critics have made the case for his art’s relationship to the brilliant coloration and humor of the 1960s Pop Movement, the social commentary of the great nineteenth-century French caricaturist Honoré Daumier, and Robert Henri’s circle of “ashcan school” painters, who depict the gritty urban spectacle of New York City life in the early twentieth century. But Grooms is unique. His art celebrates life. Grooms is not the dark, brooding, and tortured artist of myth. He is, instead, a true populist.

Red Grooms: In the Studio was made possible, in part, through the support of the Westchester County Executive and the Westchester County Board of Legislators. A catalog accompanies the exhibition.

Red Grooms, The Bookstore, The Facts

The Bookstore Commissioned and Opened
In 1977, the Hudson River Museum under the direction of Richard Koshalek commissioned artist Red Grooms to create a permanent installation with the dual purpose of an artwork and a gift shop. Grooms chose the subject of a library and bookstore for the project.

The Bookstore opened to the public and to critical acclaim in March 1979.
The completed Bookstore measured 16 by 35 feet.

The Bookstore was the first complete environmental sculpture by Grooms to be acquired by a museum. At the time, Grooms called the Bookstore "the most premeditated piece I've done." With his wit and humor, his celebration of books, places and people, Red Grooms has created an environment that is both a functional space and an exciting artistic experience for the Museum visitor.

Red Grooms, the Artist

Red Grooms, who was born in Nashville, became a recognized art-world figure in the late 1950s.

In addition to working as a painter and sculptor, Red Grooms was known as a performance artist, staging elaborate improvisational happenings that eventually led to his creation of films and large-scale environment.

The over-scale exuberance and spontaneity of larger-than-life sculptures or sculptopictorama has led some to link it both to Abstract Expressionism and to Pop Art.

The Physical Bookstore

The dual nature of The Bookstore -- an art object designed for commercial use -- inspired Grooms to design the work with two very different facades. One of the two entrances is Grooms' interpretation of the imposing entrance to the J. Pierpont Morgan Library. Around the corner a less formal entrance depicts the friendly clutter of the Isaac Mendoza Book Company. Both sites were favorite Manhattan hangouts for Grooms, who spent many hours sketching them in preparation for his working models of the installation.

The two locations meet in the center of the Bookstore's jubilantly hectic interior, crowded with over 5000 "books" whose ironic titles reflect actual books. The "skylight" imitating stained glass is reminiscent of many 19th-century interiors. Halfway thorough the room, the witty interpretation of Morgan's high style gives way to the disarray of Mendoza's shop. Clerks, browsers, ghosts and mice mingle with portraits of Grooms' construction assistants.

Funding The Bookstore

In 1978, the National Endowment for the Arts had a program that awarded challenge grants for the acquisition of works by younger American artists.

Funding for the Bookstore was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, matched by contributions from the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, Sarah I. Schieffelin Residuary Trust, Wells, Rich, Green, Inc., Gestetner Corporation, and IBM Corporation.

The Bookstore, a Traveling Exhibition

In June, 1982, elements of The Bookstore were loaned to the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania for their exhibition Philadelphia Cornucopia, celebrating Grooms’ latest installation of the “City of Brotherly Love.”

The Bookstore, Restored

In 1990, Museum commissioned a report on treatment and cleaning The Bookstore, which has been visited by thousands.

In 2005, The Museum dismantles The Bookstore for the first time in 26 years. This is done to make way for a new Museum lobby. This allows for the restoration of The Bookstore which was showing much signs of the heavy usage it received as a retail outlet. When The Bookstore is reinstalled it will maintain its role as a fully realized sculpture environment but will no longer have to bear the additional burden of being a functioning Museum gift shop.

Red Grooms has designed a new floor for The Bookstore, replacing the original industrial carpet and has redesigned the layout for new location.

From December 2007 to January 2008 Tom Burckhardt, long time studio assistant to Grooms, retrofits the original panels to fit the new space, restores worn paint and cleans the lions and other surfaces in preparation for The Bookstore’s second opening on February 9, 2008.

The Hudson River Museum is located at 511 Warburton Avenue, Yonkers NY. Minutes from the Saw Mill River Parkway, exit 9, north or southbound. Information and directions: 914.963.4550 and www.hrm.org. Wed - Sun 12- 5 pm. Fridays 12-8 pm. Admission: Adults $5; Seniors 62 & older and youth 5-16 $3. Fridays 5 to 8 pm free.

The largest cultural institution in Westchester County, the Hudson River Museum is a multi-disciplinary complex that draws its identity from its site on the banks of the Hudson River, and seeks to broaden the cultural horizons of all its visitors. It engages in the presentation of exhibitions, programs, teaching initiatives, research, collection, preservation, and conservation – a wide range of activities that interpret its collections, interests and communities.

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	Red Grooms Is Back! Return of Red Grooms’ Bookstore and a New Exhibition that Shows His Path to Creativity February 9 - May 25 One of America’s major artists with a truly popular following, Red Grooms is returning to the Hudson River Museum thirty years after his creation of The Bookstore – a gem in the Museum’s permanent collection that has become an artistic emblem of Westchester County. Red Grooms appears at the Hudson River Museum with a reinstallation of The Bookstore, restored with the artist’s vision, and a new exhibition –In the Studio-- on view from February 9 through May 25. The worlds that inspire Grooms stretch from silent movies to dance halls to America’s urban canyons and first colonies. Red Grooms grew up in Nashville and began his career as an actor. His sense of theater is integral to the multimedia experience he creates in sculpture, paintings, and films. Now a quintessential New York artist, Grooms shows the city’s people and their neighborhoods with both wit and acute comment. His commentary has endeared The Bookstore to thousands since its installation at the Hudson River Museum in 1979. True to the larger-than-life environmental sculptures that brought Pop Artist Grooms attention around the globe, The Bookstore deftly joins two favorite haunts for New York City book lovers—the lively and oldest secondhand bookshop in New York City, the Isaac Mendoza Book Company, and the patrician Morgan Library. At its creation, Grooms called The Bookstore “the most premeditated piece I’ve done.” Made to function as the Museum’s gift shop, it opened to critical acclaim. David Shirey, NY Times, noted the sculpture “…titillating our hearts and tititvating our minds to superb visual comedy.” The sculpture’s flamboyantly colored interior is crowded with life-size, stuffed vinyl figures, of people who go to library reading rooms as well as bargain bookstores and over 5,000 painted books, whose ironic titles reflect actual books. Clerks, browsers, ghosts, and mice mingle with portraits of Grooms’ construction assistants. The Bookstore was funded by a Museum Purchase Plan Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts with matching funds from the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, the Sarah I. Schieffelin Residuary Trust, Wells, Rich, Green, Inc., Gestetner Corporation, and IBM Corporation. As the museum embarked on plans to construct a new lobby, shifting visitor flow throughout the building, plans were considered to relocate the piece to a new dedicated gallery. Grooms approved the major conservation efforts and changes to the work that included altering the position of the two entrances to fit the new gallery space, the creation of a new central island, which incorporated the original vinyl patrons, and the design for a new painted floor to replace the red wall-to-wall carpeting adapted from the original space. The conservation work was executed by Tom Burkhardt, who oversaw the re-installation. Grooms has had scores of exhibitions over his career but In the Studio is the first to explore not only his triumphs, such as his most famous work Ruckus Manhattan, but also Grooms’ path to creativity that includes his artistic concepts too prohibitive to execute, such as the plans for a huge musical The Divine Sarah, a life of the actress Sarah Burnhardt, for which Grooms created nine charming stage sets-- all on view in the exhibition. Grooms brings vision to visible reality with a happy combination of meticulous planning and preliminary studies in the form of miniature paper, clay and wood models, or maquettes. Ranging from a few inches to nearly eight feet, the models are made quickly, the artist’s fingerprints still on them, others finished pieces. The most elaborate illuminate, play music, and move. Grooms knows the power of his models, comparing them to the allure of dollhouses that capture a world in miniature and entice the viewer in to another world. Among the models appearing the show In the Studio that have never been seen before are a miniature ticker tape parade featuring Mayor LaGaurdia; Peacable Kingdom; a large-scale model of dozens of different animals decorating a giant “tree of life;” Snake Charmer, part of a design for a proposed circus series; a model for the Iowa State Fair, featuring the famed “butter cow” and Flamenco Dancers, Grooms’ latest work that is now evolving into a design for a huge sculpture only to be imagined. Red Grooms, the artist, is hard to categorize. He works with all kinds of materials including paper, plaster, wood, found objects, and cardboard. About his work, he says he has "a giddy sense of reality." He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, and the New School of Social Research in New York. In Provincetown, Massachusetts, he was a student of Abstract Expressionist Hans Hoffman. In New York, he was a participant in "Happenings" or performance art, along with Jim Dine, Allan Kaprow, and Claes Oldenburg. For Grooms, this activity was an outgrowth of his interest in the pageantry of the circus, something that has intrigued him throughout his life. Critics have made the case for his art’s relationship to the brilliant coloration and humor of the 1960s Pop Movement, the social commentary of the great nineteenth-century French caricaturist Honoré Daumier, and Robert Henri’s circle of “ashcan school” painters, who depict the gritty urban spectacle of New York City life in the early twentieth century. But Grooms is unique. His art celebrates life. Grooms is not the dark, brooding, and tortured artist of myth. He is, instead, a true populist. Red Grooms: In the Studio was made possible, in part, through the support of the Westchester County Executive and the Westchester County Board of Legislators. A catalog accompanies the exhibition. Red Grooms, The Bookstore, The Facts The Bookstore Commissioned and Opened In 1977, the Hudson River Museum under the direction of Richard Koshalek commissioned artist Red Grooms to create a permanent installation with the dual purpose of an artwork and a gift shop. Grooms chose the subject of a library and bookstore for the project. The Bookstore opened to the public and to critical acclaim in March 1979. The completed Bookstore measured 16 by 35 feet. The Bookstore was the first complete environmental sculpture by Grooms to be acquired by a museum. At the time, Grooms called the Bookstore "the most premeditated piece I've done." With his wit and humor, his celebration of books, places and people, Red Grooms has created an environment that is both a functional space and an exciting artistic experience for the Museum visitor. Red Grooms, the Artist Red Grooms, who was born in Nashville, became a recognized art-world figure in the late 1950s. In addition to working as a painter and sculptor, Red Grooms was known as a performance artist, staging elaborate improvisational happenings that eventually led to his creation of films and large-scale environment. The over-scale exuberance and spontaneity of larger-than-life sculptures or sculptopictorama has led some to link it both to Abstract Expressionism and to Pop Art. The Physical Bookstore The dual nature of The Bookstore -- an art object designed for commercial use -- inspired Grooms to design the work with two very different facades. One of the two entrances is Grooms' interpretation of the imposing entrance to the J. Pierpont Morgan Library. Around the corner a less formal entrance depicts the friendly clutter of the Isaac Mendoza Book Company. Both sites were favorite Manhattan hangouts for Grooms, who spent many hours sketching them in preparation for his working models of the installation. The two locations meet in the center of the Bookstore's jubilantly hectic interior, crowded with over 5000 "books" whose ironic titles reflect actual books. The "skylight" imitating stained glass is reminiscent of many 19th-century interiors. Halfway thorough the room, the witty interpretation of Morgan's high style gives way to the disarray of Mendoza's shop. Clerks, browsers, ghosts and mice mingle with portraits of Grooms' construction assistants. Funding The Bookstore In 1978, the National Endowment for the Arts had a program that awarded challenge grants for the acquisition of works by younger American artists. Funding for the Bookstore was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, matched by contributions from the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, Sarah I. Schieffelin Residuary Trust, Wells, Rich, Green, Inc., Gestetner Corporation, and IBM Corporation. The Bookstore, a Traveling Exhibition In June, 1982, elements of The Bookstore were loaned to the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania for their exhibition Philadelphia Cornucopia, celebrating Grooms’ latest installation of the “City of Brotherly Love.” The Bookstore, Restored In 1990, Museum commissioned a report on treatment and cleaning The Bookstore, which has been visited by thousands. In 2005, The Museum dismantles The Bookstore for the first time in 26 years. This is done to make way for a new Museum lobby. This allows for the restoration of The Bookstore which was showing much signs of the heavy usage it received as a retail outlet. When The Bookstore is reinstalled it will maintain its role as a fully realized sculpture environment but will no longer have to bear the additional burden of being a functioning Museum gift shop. Red Grooms has designed a new floor for The Bookstore, replacing the original industrial carpet and has redesigned the layout for new location. From December 2007 to January 2008 Tom Burckhardt, long time studio assistant to Grooms, retrofits the original panels to fit the new space, restores worn paint and cleans the lions and other surfaces in preparation for The Bookstore’s second opening on February 9, 2008. The Hudson River Museum is located at 511 Warburton Avenue, Yonkers NY. Minutes from the Saw Mill River Parkway, exit 9, north or southbound. Information and directions: 914.963.4550 and www.hrm.org. Wed - Sun 12- 5 pm. Fridays 12-8 pm. Admission: Adults $5; Seniors 62 & older and youth 5-16 $3. Fridays 5 to 8 pm free. The largest cultural institution in Westchester County, the Hudson River Museum is a multi-disciplinary complex that draws its identity from its site on the banks of the Hudson River, and seeks to broaden the cultural horizons of all its visitors. It engages in the presentation of exhibitions, programs, teaching initiatives, research, collection, preservation, and conservation – a wide range of activities that interpret its collections, interests and communities.