RYAN LEE

About the Presentation
RYAN LEE will exhibit works by three multidisciplinary artists and activists of 1960s and 70s New York—Camille Billops, Vivian Browne and May Stevens—in celebration of the 50th anniversary of a seminal year in their lives. In 1973, Stevens became a founding member of the downtown feminist gallery SOHO20, in which Browne and Billops would both participate throughout their careers. That same year, Billops purchased the Broadway loft that became a central space for the Hatch Billops Collection, which she created with her husband to preserve and promote Black culture. Browne, a founder of the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition and Where We At collective, bridged the gap between feminist and civil rights spaces throughout her life. The group presentation will include Stevens’s striking, Pop-esque Big Daddy works made in response to the Vietnam War, Browne’s politically driven Little Men series, and ceramics and prints reflecting Billops’s deepening involvement in her community of Black artists and intellectuals.

About the Gallery
Founded in 2013 by Mary Ryan and Jeffrey Lee, RYAN LEE has established itself as a welcoming place of discovery and dialogue for art ranging from post-war art to the contemporary. Celebrating emerging and established artists and estates, the gallery takes a multi-generational approach to its programming, presenting innovative and scholarly exhibitions across all spectrums of art practices, including painting, photography, video, sculpture, and performance. The gallery takes chances on a wide variety of boundary-pushing artists; their work consistently transcends political, cultural, material, or technical boundaries. In addition, RYAN LEE has, throughout its history, demonstrated its long-standing interest and dedication to feminist, Black and Asian American, as well as queer narratives in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The gallery is led by partners of different generations and backgrounds with over six decades of combined experiences informing its unique approach.