http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8g44x4q Online items available Finding aid for the Margo Leavin Gallery records, Pietro Rigolo Finding aid for the Margo Leavin 2015.M.5 1 Gallery records, Descriptive Summary Title: Margo Leavin Gallery records Date (inclusive): 1947-2017, bulk 1966-2013 Number: 2015.M.5 Creator/Collector: Leavin, Margo, 1936- Physical Description: 346 Linear Feet(897 boxes, 20 flatfiles) Repository: The Getty Research Institute Special Collections 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100 Los Angeles 90049-1688 [email protected] URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10020/askref (310) 440-7390 Abstract: In nearly forty-two years of operation as one of the foremost art venues in Los Angeles (1970 -2012), Margo Leavin Gallery presented over five hundred exhibitions. Grounded in Minimalism and Pop Art, the gallery showed a mix of works by both New York and Los Angeles artists such as Dan Flavin and Claes Oldenburg, and gradually moved into the terrain of Conceptual Art, representing artists such as Alexis Smith, John Baldessari, and Sherrie Levine. In 1976 Wendy Brandow joined the gallery staff, and became Director and Partner in 1989. Brandow played a key role in the gallery: she was active in all aspects of the enterprise, from conceptualizing and organizing exhibition to managing business affairs, and was instrumental in engaging with a younger, conceptually oriented generation of artists such as Larry Johnson, Stephen Prina, Christopher Williams, and Roy Dowell. Leavin and Brandow placed numerous works at the world's top museums, had a profound effect on the art world of the city, and made an indisputable contribution to the international acclaim accorded to Los Angeles Conceptual Art. Request Materials: Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the catalog record for this collection. Click here for the access policy . Language: Collection material is in English Biographical/Historical Note Margo Leavin was born in 1936 in New York City, where she lived until age fourteen, when her family moved to Los Angeles. She attended the University of California, Berkeley for two years and then transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles, where she graduated in 1958 with a double major in Art History and Psychology. In 1956 Leavin studied at Universitad National Autónoma de México in Mexico City, where she became part of a circle of artists of her peer group that included Luis López Loza, Pedro Friedeberg, and Francisco Toledo. Between 1958 and 1962, Leavin traveled frequently to Mexico, bringing back to Los Angeles and selling works by Mexican artists, and sharing profits in an informal dealer/artist relationship. At the same time, she was employed as a social worker in Los Angeles for the Bureau of Public Assistance. Beginning in 1962 until 1967, she was employed by the Phillip Morris Agency in the publicity department, while working as a private dealer of contemporary art from her home, focusing mostly on prints. In 1970 Leavin opened her gallery on 812 North Robertson Boulevard in West Hollywood, where she would remain for more than 40 years. The space was a wing of the workshop of the stage artist Tony Duquette. Though Leavin had close friendships with Los Angeles artists such as Sam Francis and Edward Kienholz, she found that New York artists were more willing to give a young female dealer the opportunity to represent them. Claes Oldenburg was a case in point, and Leavin's 1971 show of his work, for which she produced the first catalogue raisonné of the artist's prints and multiples, counts as a milestone in the gallery's history. Through Oldenburg, with whom she continued collaborating for 20 years, Leavin attracted other New York artists such as Ellsworth Kelly, Jim Dine, John Chamberlain, and Dan Flavin, who were represented by a gallery in New York, but had no representation in Los Angeles. Through these presentations may seem to have perpetuated the elevation of New York critical favorites, they also linked to, and thus enhanced, the work of the gallery's Southern California artists. Within its first three years, Leavin's gallery had indeed established what was to be its key strategy: alternating shows of the East Coast artists with shows of Los Angeles-based artists, such as Joe Goode, Jud Fine, and Sam Francis. Some women artists that emerged in the 1960s, such as Lynda Benglis and Hannah Wilke, also exhibited in the gallery during its first decade of activity. In 1976, Wendy Brandow joined the gallery staff. Brandow, who previously held positions at the National Gallery of Art and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C., worked at Margo Leavin Gallery until 1980. Finding aid for the Margo Leavin 2015.M.5 2 Gallery records, Grounded in Minimalism and Pop Art, the gallery gradually moved into the terrain of Conceptualism, with the addition of Alexis Smith in 1982 and John Baldessari in 1984. In the same year, Leavin opened an additional space at a nearby former post office on 817 Hilldale Avenue, where five years later Claes Oldenburg permanently installed his Knife Slicing through Wall, a stainless steel blade emerging from the concrete façade as if the building were a giant stick of butter. The sculpture became an iconic West Hollywood landmark. With its 1984 addition the gallery expanded to reach 13,000 sq feet, and the new, museum-like space, with arched redwood ceiling, was soon nicknamed "mini-MOCA." The gallery which had started as a print gallery and shifted over the years towards showing sculpture, placed important and difficult to sell large pieces, and would become famous for its large, museum-quality surveys of contemporary art. In 1989 Wendy Brandow, who had relocated in Indonesia, and then returned to the U.S. to earn her law degree in 1985, joined the gallery again as Director and Partner. She was active in all aspects of the enterprise, from conceptualizing and organizing exhibition to managing business affairs. Leavin and Brandow in the early 1990s went on to show Joseph Kosuth, Roni Horn, and Dan Graham among others, presaging a more complete integration of Conceptual artists during the decade, including Stephen Prina, Larry Johnson, Christopher Williams, Sherrie Levine, and Allen Ruppersberg. The gallery became known for selling Los Angeles conceptual art to the world, with John Baldessari, whose work the gallery skillfully raised to increasing prominence, as its top artist. The two gallerists were known for having long-standing and close relationships with their artists. Over the decades, they mined the then-scant Los Angeles collector base for reliable investors, and placed numerous works within prominent collections around the world, including those of Fred and Marcia Weisman, Philip and Bea Gersh, Joel Wachs, and Eli Broad, and Eugenio López Alonso (Collección Jumex), Paula Azcarraga, and Carmen Cuenca in Mexico City. The gallery sold to top museums, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery in Washington D.C., Tate Modern, London, and the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City. Commenting on the fact that brick-and-mortar art market was losing relevance vis-à-vis e-commerce and event-based art purchases such as the ones at art fairs, Brandow told the Los Angeles Times in August 2012: "People are approaching art differently today. They're not seeking out the thoughtful, complete statement that artists make when they create gallery exhibitions. The exhibitions have been such an important part of what we do, and they are no longer valued as much by the public." The gallery closed the following month, after nearly forty-two years of operation, and more than five hundred exhibitions. Sources consulted: Leddy, Annette and Phillips, Glenn. Acquisition Approval Form for "Margo Leavin Gallery records, 1960-2013," accession no.2015.M.5, June 26, 2013. Margo Leavin Gallery: 25 Years (Los Angeles: Margo Leavin Gallery, 1995). Drohojowska-Philp, Hunter, "Still Making Things Happen: After a Quarter-Century Selling Contemporary Art in L.A., Margo Leavin Hesitates to Look Back, Since There's So Much Yet to Fight For," Los Angeles Times, September 17, 1995. Ng, David, "For Margo Leavin Gallery, Changing Tastes Mean It's Time to Close," Los Angeles Times , August 15, 2012. Wagley, Catherine, "Margo Leavin Gallery, Closing after 42 Years: How It Became One of L.A.'s Best," LA Weekly, August 17, 2012. Conditions Governing Access The archive is open for use by qualified researchers, with the following exceptions: Series I.A. Contacts, Series III.A. Appraisals, Series III.D. Inventory, and Series III.E. Invoices are sealed until February 2025. Audiovisual materials, data disks and hard drive are unavailable until reformatted. Boxes 827 and 842 are restricted due to fragility. Box 888** is unavailable pending conservation treatment. Additionally, Boxes 89, 607-608, 669, and 744 are sealed due to privacy issues. Publication Rights Contact Library Reproductions and Permissions . Acquisition Information Acquired in 2015. Processing History Processed by Pietro Rigolo between July 2016 and March 2019. In 2018-2019, three small collections of material were added to the records, comprising for the most part gallery ephemera and posters. Related Materials As a complete resource for the study of one of the most prominent and enduring contemporary art galleries in Los Angeles, the Margo Leavin Gallery records complement the extensive collection of Los Angeles-based gallery records held at the Finding aid for the Margo Leavin 2015.M.5 3 Gallery records, Getty Research Institute, joining collections such as the Betty Asher papers (2009.M.30), Jan Baum Gallery records (2008.M.61), Mizuno Gallery records (2010.M.84), Patricia Faure Gallery records (2010.M.13), and the Rolf Nelson Gallery records (2010.M.38).