Installation view of Luke Fowler: Warriors, 2009, X Initiative, New York. Courtesy of X Initiative.
Independent and Contemporary Art Library are pleased to announce the preservation and online launch of eight more archives as part of The New York Gallery History Project. Orchard, Queer Thoughts, X Initiative, Real Fine Arts, Murray Guy, Team, Taxter and Spengemann, and Svetlana will join the archive of Jay Gorney Modern Art, preserved and made public on Contemporary Art Library, supported by Independent’s philanthropic initiatives.
These galleries had closed and their exhibition histories, which helped shape a generation of New York's most consequential artists, were scattered on old hard drives, in folders, and boxes of slides. They have now been gathered, organized, and made accessible to the public. The NYGHP is part of a long-standing effort by Contemporary Art Library to preserve recent art history, which, in an era of gallery closures and poor digital preservation, is increasingly urgent.
The new archives are:
Orchard
Orchard was an exhibition and event space on the Lower East Side operating between 2005 and 2008, and run by a cooperative of 12 artists and intellectuals. The gallery’s diverse program focused on thematically, conceptually, and politically driven group exhibitions and was known for bringing together established and lesser-known artists from different generations, including Michael Asher, Hans Haacke, and Josiah McElheny.
Queer Thoughts
Queer Thoughts was an experimental gallery founded by artists Miguel Bendaña and Sam Lipp, which began in Chicago in 2012 before moving to Tribeca in 2015 and finally closing in 2023. Over its 11 years, the gallery became known for showing conceptual work, bringing to prominence artists such as David Rappeneau, Diamond Stingily, and Puppies Puppies (Jade Kuriki-Olivo).
X Initiative
A one-year experimental non-profit founded by Elizabeth Dee, X Initiative occupied the former Dia Center for the Arts building in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. Operating from March 2009 to February 2010, X Initiative presented 12 exhibitions and more than 50 events. X Initiative was guided by a more than 50-member advisory board of artists, curators, and museum professionals, and was directed by curator Cecilia Alemani, with Massimiliano Gioni and Matthew Higgs among its key collaborators. Its program included solo presentations by artists including Derek Jarman, Mika Tajima, Christian Holstad, Tris Vonna-Michell, Luke Fowler, Keren Cytter, and Fritz Haeg, as well as a major exhibition by Hans Haacke, Weather, or Not, and a survey of the Polish artist Artur Żmijewski.
Real Fine Arts
Artists Tyler Dobson and Ben Morgan-Cleveland opened Real Fine Arts in 2008 in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. It closed in 2019 after moving to the Grand Army Plaza neighborhood. During its decade-long run, the gallery showed a roster of young artists, often for their debuts, who would go on to greater acclaim, including Georgia Sagri, Sam Pulitzer, Yuji Agematsu, Mathieu Malouf, Colby Bird, Jana Euler, Nicolas Ceccaldi, and Antek Walczak.
Murray Guy
Founded by Margaret Murray and Janice Guy in 1998, Murray Guy operated for 18 years in Chelsea, closing in 2017. Memorable photography, film, and video installations epitomized its conceptual program, including exhibitions by Matthew Buckingham, Alejandro Cesarco, Leidy Churchman, Moyra Davey, Kota Ezawa, Matthew Higgs, An-My Lê, Zoe Leonard, Rosalind Nashashibi, Barbara Probst, Lucy Skaer, and Sergei Tcherepnin.
Team
Team opened in Chelsea in 1996, later moving to SoHo and expanding to Venice, California. It closed in 2020. Founded by gallerist José Freire and artist Francis Ruyter, it showed a range of art, often on the leading edge of sculpture, installation, performance, and new media, including Carol Bove, Ryan McGinley, Banks Violette, Cory Arcangel, Slater Bradley, Santiago Sierra, Sam McKinniss, and Gardar Eide Einarsson.
Taxter and Spengemann
Started by Kelly Taxter and Pascal Spengemann in Chelsea in 2003, Taxter and Spengemann closed in 2011. The gallery showed a range of emerging artists, including Josh Smith, Kalup Linzy, Matt Johnson, Andrew Kuo, Lutz Bacher, Frank Benson, A.K. Burns, A.L. Steiner, Adam Putnam, Xavier Cha, and Wardell Milan.
Svetlana
Svetlana opened in 2014 in an apartment in Tribeca, later moved to another apartment space in Chelsea, and finally to a storefront on the Lower East Side, where it operated until 2020. The gallery’s program focused on emerging artists such as Lise Soskolne, Win McCarthy, Tyler Dobson, and Bill Hayden.
“It’s more important than ever to remember the things that artists and art spaces can achieve. I believe these archives contain invaluable models we can all benefit from studying,” states Forrest Arakawa-Nash, Executive Director, Contemporary Art Library.
The nonprofit New York Gallery History Project is a multi-year partnership that aims to provide an essential service to curators, current gallery practitioners and art historians. It is made possible through generous donations by Independent. Others interested in joining and supporting the initiative can do so via the Contemporary Art Library website.
About The New York Gallery History Project
Contemporary Art Library, in partnership with Independent, funds, gathers, organizes, digitizes, preserves, and makes accessible a trove of important documentation from seminal art spaces in recent New York art history, spanning from the mid-1980s to present. Recognizing the precarity of these histories and the risk of them fading into obscurity, the partnership ensures that documentation from these art spaces lives on within Contemporary Art Library, the preeminent archive of contemporary art documentation. It aims to widen access to the history of contemporary art in New York for scholars, researchers, and the public alike.
About Contemporary Art Library
Launched in 2021, Contemporary Art Library is already the largest online database of contemporary art documentation in the world, with over one million files, free and open to all. Combining 15 years of material published on Contemporary Art Daily with comprehensive histories from more than 80 Founding Partners and a growing list of closed spaces, the Library has quickly become the definitive resource for learning about the work of contemporary artists, used more than 11 million times in 2025 by people around the world. By providing access to current knowledge of contemporary art, we are changing the art world to be more open, more inclusive, and therefore more diverse, which in turn makes art richer and stronger.