NYAB Event - Lowell Nesbitt and Philip Van Aver “Secret Gardens”

Lowell Nesbitt and Philip Van Aver “Secret Gardens”

Dorian Grey Gallery

This event has ended.

Lowell Nesbitt was born in Baltimore in 1933. He graduated from Pennsylvania’s Tyler School of Art at Temple University in 1955 and attended London’s Royal College of Art from 1955 to 1956. His first exhibition was in 1957, and was followed by more than eighty domestic and international solo exhibitions in his lifetime. His paintings, drawings and prints are included in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Art and Philadelphia Museum of Art. In 1969 and 1970, NASA named Nesbitt the official artist of the Apollo 9 and Apollo 13 missions. In 1980, the US Postal Service released a series of stamps based upon his floral paintings.
Though Philip Van Aver has lived in the same apartment on East 6th Street since 1969, this exhibition of his works dating from 1976 to 2014 is his first gallery show to take place in the Tompkins Square Park area of the Lower East Side. During the over forty years Philip Van Aver has lived on the Lower East Side, he has been very involved in the politics of the area. Beginning in 1976 he became a member of the Citizens Committee to Keep the Ottendorfer Library Open. At the time, the New York Public Library was attempting to close eighteen branches, including the historic one on Second Avenue. Besides blocking the closure, the committee succeeded in having the exterior and parts of the interior landmarked. Since then, he has worked with preservationists, building owners and elected officials to designate the Charlie Parker Residence and The Children’s Aid Society building, both on Avenue B; P.S. 64 and other area sites. As a steering committee member he has worked with the Friends of Tompkins Square Park in 1985 and 1991 to stop proposed redevelopment of the park. He was on the executive committee of the Lower East Side Joint Planning Council, which was mostly concerned with housing issues, and was a founding member of CoDA, a Lower East Side Democratic party activist organization. More recently, he worked with the Lower East Side Preservation Initiative to implement the massive Second Avenue/ East Village historic district proposed by the Landmarks Preservation Commission.