In "The Bookstore,” it can be seen how Mendoza's Bookstore, a second-hand book shop that Grooms frequented — and which was one of the first to succumb to the mega-bookstore chains — was used as a counterpoint to the classic architecture of the Morgan Library.
:Few museums have had a calling card as effective as the Hudson River Museum's. "The Bookstore," a Westchester landmark, was a mid-1970s collaboration between Richard Koshalek, the museum's director, Red Grooms, the artist, and John Holmes, director of exhibition installation. Designed at a time when New York City faced bankruptcy and there was precious little funding for cultural institutions, it was hoped that a saucy Grooms environment would stimulate interest and attendance.
Planned as a site-specific work within the museum's gift shop, the sculpto-pictorama was realized as a riotous mixed-media fantasy that invited museumgoers to cross a portal and enter a world that was part Morgan Library, part second-hand bookshop. With walls of colorful books as a backdrop for the souvenirs and idiosyncratic vinyl characters staring back at the people staring at them, "The Bookstore" had a "giddy sense of reality."
Thirty years later, in a different financial climate, with the appetite and appreciation of museums having swung 180 degrees, "The Bookstore" was reconsidered by the museum and it was ultimately decided that it no longer needed to function in dual roles. Permanent space was allocated and an exhibition was built around it.
Enter once again the artist, who, invited by Bartholomew Bland, current curator of exhibitions, to revisit the work, sized up the wear and tear sustained and said, with as much humor as truth, "I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did."
A younger Grooms with one of the reverse painted vinyl figures from "The Bookstore,” circa 1978. Photo courtesy Red Grooms.
To turn the art-as-commerce venture into pure art, Grooms again entered into collaboration, this time with Bland and artist Tom Burkhardt. Grooms made drawings repositioning the doors for better traffic flow in "The Bookstore's" new, dedicated space. The retail counter was replaced with an arty one. The carpeting was removed and replaced by a newly designed painted version. A maquette showed the changes in scale. There were budget considerations and time constraints. Burckhardt, under Grooms' creative direction, executed the changes. He also supervised the reinstallation.
The process, one that was second nature to the artists, would be new and enticing to art lovers, concluded Bland.
He saw an opportunity to mount a Grooms exhibit that would allow viewers to step into the studio and see how Grooms' ideas take shape through drawings and paintings, foam core figures and carved and painted Styrofoam models.
As Grooms tells it, "Bartholomew Bland proposed that I do this show based on the kind of things in the studio, the maquettes, stuff that is preliminary to the pieces. I showed him things in the state of where I got [with them] before [the commission] got cancelled…I was sort of challenged to complete them."
