On a gorgeous Sunday afternoon in mid-May, The School—Jack Shainman Gallery’s free-to-the-public exhibition space in Kinderhook, N.Y.—held its opening reception for the exhibition, Michael Snow: A Life Survey (1955-2020). It was hard to find parking in Kinderhook that day, as cars and buses flooded in from New York City and the surrounding region. The sidewalks pulsed with gallery-goers and well-coiffed dogs on decorative leashes. The former school grounds—now a five-acre lawn and sculpture garden—were scattered with white and yellow tents brimming with refreshments (such as crowd-favorite La Bella’s pizza and assorted wines) and visitors discussing the show. You might think you were in Central Park, some 133 miles away.
Early influences: The bounty of The Clark and being a music professor’s son
Jack Shainman grew up in the 1960s and ’70s in Williamstown, Mass. His father was a music professor at Williams College and co-founder of the Williamstown Theatre Festival—creating the perfect inspiration for Shainman’s broad-minded arts and humanities perspective. Although he played several musical instruments, Shainman’s true passion was riding horses. Defying Jewish stereotypes of his time (his father told him emphatically, “Jews don’t ride”), he got an old racehorse in his early teens and devoted himself to equestrian pursuits. He spent the rest of his spare time at Williamstown’s Clark Art Institute, captivated by Madonnas, martyrs, and other religious artwork. He began buying art from Williams students and developed a love of art and travel, exploring different cultures on his father’s sabbaticals.
After a year of horsemanship (blazing the trail for later “gap year” enthusiasts), Shainman attended American University in Washington, D.C. After graduation, he moved to Provincetown, Mass., to start a gallery and met Claude Simard, a French-Canadian painter, who became Shainman’s life and business partner until his death in 2014.
Jack Shainman Gallery’s city origins and rural expansion
Shainman opened Jack Shainman Gallery with co-founder Simard in 1984 in Washington, D.C. Soon after, they relocated their project to New York City—first in the East Village and then in Soho, before finally moving to 513 West 20th Street in Chelsea. In 2013, they opened two additional spaces, another one in Chelsea and the other in Kinderhook, N.Y. They are on the cusp of opening a new location—at 46 Lafayette Street in Tribeca—that will be inaugurated by longtime gallery artist Nick Cave as early as 2024.
Referring to The School, Shainman explains, “I’ve always dreamed of having a big space for storage and for collecting, and living with, art” (the interior and exterior landscapes of the city being far less expansive). Another dream was owning a weekend home/farm upstate, which he found outside Kinderhook in an idyllic spot with stables and ample acreage to practice his equestrian show-jumping training. Driving by the former Martin Van Buren High School in Kinderhook one day, he saw a “for sale” sign. So he and his current partner Carlos Vega made an offer on the spot. “I still come here and can’t believe it’s actually ours,” he says of the 1929 school, dedicated by FDR in 1931.
The School—a 30,000-square-foot gallery housed in a Federal revival building with colonial Dutch details and all the tell-tale school markings—is unique among Berkshire and Hudson Valley art galleries both for its structure and its mission to present “ambitious, large-scale exhibitions that shed new light on artists working both within and outside of Jack Shainman Gallery’s program.”
Shainman and Vega hired the late Spanish architect Antonio Torrecillas to reimagine the structure and carry out the extensive renovations needed to transform it into the cultural icon it is today. While city residents and people with ties to the art world know it well, many Berkshire residents, second-home-owners, and vacationers may have never experienced all it offers. (For business owners in Kinderhook, however, it is a magnet drawing visitors to the tiny village—and their shops and restaurants.)
An art magnet that attracts other investors and gallery owners
Shainman has an international reputation as a successful art dealer. Still, all who know him agree that he views his gallery as his family, not his road to riches. “You have to love the art and artists first,” he insists. One of his first big artist discoveries was Malick Sidibe, who photographed daily life in his West African nation. Shainman saw an unknown artist exploring universal themes that transcended his subject, which moved him. “I’ve got to keep these all,” he thought. While uncommon in the city, that attitude found fertile soil (and storage space) in Kinderhook. As Shainman told Robert Ayers in The Berkshire Edge in 2015, “I’ve always loved Kinderhook. It’s so beautiful, and there’s so much history. Now The School is one of the most beautiful buildings in the town, and we’re part of the community. It’s an investment in our futures.”
Economic development director Renee Schurr acknowledges that the gallery has helped to put Kinderhook on the map with a new stream of visitors and curators. “Arts and culture play a central role in attracting home buyers, visitors, and entrepreneurs to our historic village. Having a world-class gallery like The School has had an immeasurable impact on Kinderhook’s revitalization by raising the village’s profile regionally, nationally, and internationally,” she says. “The connection between The School and Kinderhook businesses continues to expand as amenities for visitors, such as overnight lodging at the recently opened Old Dutch Inn as well as new shops, galleries, and eateries, encourage visitors to stay and enjoy what Kinderhook has to offer.”
Other gallery owners followed Shainman’s lead, including Kristen Dodge of September Gallery. “I was reluctant to move to a small town in 2014, but the proximity of Shainman’s School gave me permission to take the possibility seriously,” she notes. “We could live remotely and be near a serious, international art program. I’ve since relocated my gallery from Hudson to Kinderhook and am thrilled to be in a shared context with The School.”
Over the last decade, many other prominent New Yorkers have also joined the scene—including restauranteur Yen Ngo and artist Darren Waterston, who collaborated to create a nourishing food-and-art hub in the old Kinderhook Knitting Mill (Waterston was encouraged to buy a house in the area due to Shainman’s gallery). And the attractions are only growing as Kinderhook receives more funding to fortify its historical roots, natural beauty, and cultural offerings.
A commitment to giving artists a voice and starting conversations
In 1992, Shainman discovered a postcard of a young artist’s work on the wall of a curator’s office in Ohio. He spent months searching for Kerry James Marshall with the hope of displaying his work. He credits Marshall with teaching him a lot about art and the realities of the art world. Marshall, whose work highlights the non-representation of Black people in our culture, wanted his paintings to hang in museums and be purchased by Black collectors—a challenge that shaped Shainman’s trajectory as a gallerist.
Through Marshall, Shainman came to work with the artist’s close friend, Carrie Mae Weems (the photographer known for “recreating and reframing famous historical moments”). As their list of artists grew, Shainman and Simard sought to address the lack of representation of artists of color in the field, expanding their portfolio to include artists from Africa, India, Cuba, Italy, Iraq, and Israel. They were multicultural before their time, and their instincts and willingness to take significant risks paid off. The criterion for Shainman was relevance—global issues seen through personal lives.
The School’s inaugural exhibition in 2014 of sculptor and performance artist Nick Cave’s new and recent works, including several of his acclaimed Soundsuits, established Shainman’s curatorial vision, which focused on “creative exploration and cultural exchange.” Like many other artists whom Shainman represents, Cave’s imprint on the art world has grown significantly since then. Megan O’Grady named Cave “the most joyful, and critical, artist in America” in The New York Times Style Magazine’s “Greats Issue” in October 2019, noting his mastery and influence on his field and culture. Equally important was the focus of that first exhibit, “metaphorical suits of armor” (fashion sculptures) created in response to the Rodney King beatings. Entirely concealing the body, the “Soundsuits” allowed viewers to consider the wearer’s identity without judgments based on race, gender, or class.
Since that first show, The School has hosted major solo presentations by artists such as El Anatsui (2015 winner of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement award) and collaborations such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol. Group presentations have featured Nina Chanel Abney, David Altmejd, Huma Bhabha, Andrea Bowers, Margaret Kilgallen, Kerry James Marshall, Barry McGee, Andres Serrano, Laurie Simmons, Hank Willis Thomas, Carlos Vega, Carrie Mae Weems, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, among many others.
For nearly four decades, Shainman has earned a reputation “for introducing international artists to American audiences, and for promoting and developing young and mid-career artists who have gone on to gain worldwide acclaim.” He often gravitates toward artists whose work addresses difficult topics like race and gender, pushing viewers to question and reflect more deeply on the world around them or worlds too often hidden from view. His artists have gone on to gain worldwide acclaim, participating in the most important exhibitions and receiving prestigious awards. Also important to Shainman as their representative, they now command the monetary value their work deserves.
A long-lasting friendship with a genre-breaking ‘original’
Shainman was introduced to Snow’s work in 1984 by his late partner Simard. “In a career that defied categorization in medium or genre, Snow’s work embodied originality over novelty, the cerebral over the conceptual, and evolution over conclusion. It is with this expansive vision that A Life Survey is mounted, offering an intricate and dynamic portrait of Snow’s life and work,” Shainman noted in announcing the exhibition, which includes 86 works in various mediums and occupies every corner of The School.
Snow, who was born in Toronto in 1928, experimented in various creative forms from an early age, including painting and playing the piano in local jazz bands. He studied at Ontario College of Art from 1948 to 1952 and majored in Design, which he recognized as “the common aspect of all disciplines.” Following the examples of Modern artists like Picasso, Klee, Duchamp, De Kooning, Gorky, Klein, and Rothko, he pushed the limits regarding ways of seeing.
His multi-faceted approach to art led Snow to say in his 1967 exhibition catalogue, “I am not a professional. My paintings are done by a filmmaker, sculpture by a musician, films by a painter, music by a filmmaker, paintings by a sculptor, sculpture by a filmmaker, films by a musician, music by a sculptor…sometimes they all work together. Also, many of my paintings have been done by a painter, sculpture by a sculptor, films by a filmmaker, music by a musician.” As Shainman states, Snow used his art, whatever the medium, as “a means of getting closer to an idea by way of iteration, variation, and duration.”
A head-turning silhouette, a flock of geese, and a groundbreaking film
According to Shainman, no body of work exemplifies Snow’s process more than “Walking Woman”—a series that began when Snow cut out a five-foot cardboard silhouette of a woman in forward motion. Snow used this image in a series of other works, including: “Four to Five, 1962,” a photographic series staging the stencil in real cityscapes; “Shot!, 1963,” a composition of small papers stamped with the “Walking Woman”; and “Little Walk, 1964,” a live-action film and wide-ranging sampling of “Walking Woman” works in his studio, projected on the life-size free-standing cutout. He used these accompanying works to explore the rich possibilities of meaning when an image is translated through a broad spectrum of materials.
His public interventions, novel for the time, caught people off guard and invited them to see a familiar place in a new way. “Flight Stop”—60 life-sized fiberglass geese hung frozen in flight from the atrium of Eaton Center in Toronto—was the first of many commissioned public artworks Snow created.
Moving beyond “absolute surfaces,” Snow grew increasingly fascinated with the moving image—a medium that “echoed his attempts to capture temporality, memory, illusion, and subjectivity”—in 24 frames per second. His 1967 film “Wavelength,” dismissed by some and celebrated by others, placed him among visionaries like Jonas Mekas, Diderot, and Schoen, in his ability to use film to create a simulacrum. “He would construct a world, invent conditions, distort perspective, then rattle it—physically and conceptually—until an art object was revealed,” Shainman explains.
Snow didn’t like the term “experimental.” Instead, he considered his rebellion against traditional genres—now viewed as “a singular aesthetic philosophy of the interconnectedness between all creative mediums”—an effort to highlight the diversity of vision necessary for artistic discovery. “This exhibition celebrates a panoramic survey of a kaleidoscopic artist who deserves a comprehensive revisitation,” Shainman says with reverence.
When Michael Snow died in January 2023, Shainman was already in the process of curating an exhibition of his life work, having represented Snow for nearly 20 years in solo exhibitions and group shows. After his passing, Snow’s wife, curator and writer Peggy Gale, and longtime studio collaborator Mani Mazinani continued the partnership with Shainman to complete the installation.
Toronto Star writer Murray Whyte honored Snow’s vision with these words: “But really, I think, the core of Snow’s work was finding wonder in a moment seen and lost in the same instant, and the futile struggle to hold on…He believed art was ‘best left an open question’ and was driven by his enthusiasm to look as much and in as many ways as he could.”
Michael Snow: A Life Survey runs through December 16 at The School (25 Broad Street, Kinderhook) and is open to the public free of charge Saturdays from 11 to 6. For more details, visit jackshainman.com.
