The Lower East Side is Not For Sale

Gregory Sholette will take you on a trip back to the mean streets of 1980s Lower East Side by visiting sites where the activist art collective Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D: 1980-1988) staged a series of ephemeral projects against the gentrification of the neighborhood when they invented a series of imaginary art galleries including The Leona Helmsley, Discount Salon, and Guggenheim Downtown that were in reality a string of boarded-up buildings covered with posters decrying real estate speculators and the “East Village” art scene.

Our tour will begin on the North East corner of Avenue A and 10th Streets (by ) and circle around Tompkins Square Park to later return to the same location (A & 10th) where in 1984 PAD/D held its anti-gentrification street art opening at the “Guggenheim Downtown.” [pdf covering talk is available here:Sholette eflux Walk small LES 3.8.2014]