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Margo Leavin Gallery records
2015.M.5
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Contributing Institution: Special Collections
Title: Margo Leavin Gallery records
Creator: Baldessari, John, 1931-
Creator: Chamberlain, John, 1927-2011
Creator: Arakawa, Shūsaku, 1936-2010
Creator: Tuchman, Maurice
Creator: Leo Castelli Gallery
Creator: M. Knoedler & Co
Creator: McMillan, Jerry, 1936-
Creator: Flavin, Dan, 1933-1996
Creator: Oldenburg, Claes, 1929-
Creator: Kosuth, Joseph
Creator: Morris, Robert, 1931-2018
Creator: Nordman, Maria
Creator: Hockney, David
Creator: Benglis, Lynda, 1941-
Creator: Smith, Alexis, 1949-
Creator: Leavin, Margo, 1936-
Creator: Judd, Donald, 1928-1994
Creator: Johns, Jasper, 1930-
Creator: Graham, Dan, 1942-
Creator: Dine, Jim, 1935-
Creator: Leavitt, William
Creator: LeWitt, Sol, 1928-2007
Creator: Smith, David, 1906-1965
Creator: Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Creator: Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, Calif.)
Identifier/Call Number: 2015.M.5
Physical Description: 346 Linear Feet(897 boxes, 20 flatfiles)
Date (inclusive): 1947-2017, bulk 1966-2013
Date (bulk): 1966-2013
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.
Physical Location: Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the
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Language of Material: English.
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.
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. Margo Leavin died in 2021.
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.
The collection is arranged in seven series: Series I. Correspondence; Series II. Artist files; Series III. Business files;
Series IV. Exhibition files; Series V. Photographs; Series VI. Artworks; Series VII. Unidentified material.
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.
Acquired in 2015.
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 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).
Correspondence with all of these galleries is found in the Margo Leavin Gallery records, as well as with other individuals
the repository holds the papers of, such as M. Knoedler & Co. (2014.M.14), Giuseppe Panza (940004), Yvonne Rainer (2006.M.24),
and Maurice Tuchman (2015.M.19).More than 360 publications were transferred to the general collections of the Getty Research
Institute. They can be found by searching the library catalog for the phrase "Margo Leavin Gallery collection."
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.
Contact
Library Reproductions and Permissions .
The Margo Leavin Gallery records comprise a comprehensive view of its business dealings with some of the foremost post-World
War II and contemporary American artists, including provenance, histories of installations, brochures, reviews, and photographs
and slides of decades of artists' works. The collection includes extensive correspondence with collectors, dealers, and museums;
artist, exhibition and business files, including sales documentation; exhibition photographs; and over eighty works of art
or unique ephemera.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Letters (correspondence) -- United States -- 20th century
Performance art -- United States -- 20th century
Video art -- United States -- 20th century
Video recordings -- United States -- 20th century
Installations (Art)
Drawings -- United States -- 20th century
Artists -- California -- History -- 20th century
Videodiscs (video recording disks)
Videocassettes -- United States -- 20th century
Artists -- 20th century -- Correspondence
Art, American -- California -- Exhibitions
Art, American -- California -- 20th century
Chromogenic color prints -- California -- Los Angeles -- 20th century
Art galleries, Commercial -- California
Conceptual Art -- United States -- 20th century
Art dealers
Art dealers -- Correspondence
Art dealers -- Archives
Audiocassettes
Floppy disks -- United States -- 20th century
Pop art -- United States -- 20th century
Gelatin silver prints -- California -- Los Angeles -- 20th century
Minimal art -- United States -- 20th century
Dye diffusion transfer prints -- California -- Los Angeles -- 20th century
Gelatin silver negatives -- California -- Los Angeles -- 20th century
Color negatives -- California -- Los Angeles -- 20th century
Color slides -- California -- Los Angeles -- 20th century
Color transparencies -- California -- Los Angeles -- 20th century