‘Black Soho’ at Independent 20th Century: The Story of SoHo’s African-American Artists

One of the most talked-about booths at the fifth edition of the Independent 20th Century fair, which opened September 24 in the iconic Breuer building in Manhattan — the future home of Sotheby’s — is dedicated to the history of SoHo’s African-American artists, as Hyperallergic reports. The RYAN LEE and Salon 94 galleries joined forces to bring the “Black Soho” project to the fair, which stays open through Sunday, September 27.

At the heart of the project stands the Billops-Hatch Collection, the archive that artist Camille Billops and her husband, James Hatch, built over their lifetime in their loft at 491 Broadway, bought in 1973. The collection — magazines, scripts, photographs, recorded interviews and more — perpetuates over a thousand artists and served as a meeting hub for the neighborhood’s creative community. The archival materials are exhibited alongside works by artists who lived in SoHo (South of Houston Street) or contributed to shaping it: Emma Amos, Vivian Browne, David Hammons, Ed Clark, Norman Lewis, Frederick J. Brown and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Among them stands out Emma Amos’s painting “Eva the Babysitter” (1973).

“We wanted to imitate the energy of that loft. It was an incredible meeting space for many great artists of her generation, but also of younger generations,” gallerist Jeff Lee told Hyperallergic.

The “Black Soho” booth is open throughout the Independent 20th Century fair, through September 27 in the Breuer building — the brutalist structure that served as the Whitney Museum’s home from 1966 to 2014 and which Sotheby’s bought in 2023 for $100 million.

Main photo: historic cast-iron building in SoHo, New York. Photo: Elisa.rolle, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.