Artist project: Jean Freeman Gallery promotional material

Item Details

New York City, self, 1970-1971

The Jean Freeman Gallery was a conceptual project created by Terry Fugate-Wilcox as both a work of art and critique of the art world. From the summer of 1970 to March 1971, advertisements appeared in four leading art magazines—Artforum, Art in America, Arts Magazine, and ARTnews—for a group show and six solo exhibitions at the Jean Freeman Gallery in NYC. Gallery goers soon discovered the address for the gallery did not exist. The ads, in fact, were promoting fictional shows by fictional artists in a fictional gallery. 

 Jean Freeman Gallery promotional material:

*Arts Magazine advertisement proof for “Idra: Sculpture”
This ad proof is for the gallery's second exhibition. It features 2 vertical columns with 14 small photographs of Eadweard Muybridge-like sequences. Shot with a motor-driven camera, the images capture a man throwing a boomerang in an outdoor setting. This imagery would have resonated with viewers of the ad as many artists of the time were engaged in creating similar serial-based art. 
*2- Jean Freeman Image sheets for the exhibition “Idra” Oct. 3 - Nov. 5
One sheet shows a woman, assumed to be Idra. This image actually comes from a 35 mm slide Fugate-Wilcox shot in 1968 of a woman studying to be a nun. The connection for Fugate-Wilcox is that both the nun-to-be and Idra are novices in their fields. The other sheet is a serial-based reprocuction from a contact sheet of twenty-six 35 mm negatives shot  by Fugate-Wilcox in 1969 from his Broadway street loft window looking down several stories to a group of men gambling in the street.  
*Press release for the exhibition “Idra”
As with all press-releases, this release is type-written in all caps on Hiawatha erasable bond, ivory paper with the hand embossed letters JFG at the top of the page.
* Image sheet for Avery Willsgate-Smythe “Caesura”
Avery Willsgate-Smythe's “Caesura” was Fugate-Wilcox's 6th show. With this exhibition Fugate-Wilcox shifts from presenting parodies of art by his contemporaries to those directly related to his own work. Almost identical to his yet-realized proposal for San Andreas Fault Sculpture Project, from 1975, “Caesura” was a massive concrete structure that bridged the San Andreas Fault and was being gradually torn apart due to the fault's shifting tectonic plates.
The concept of Caesura is captured in this image sheet for the exhibition, with its reproduction of a photograph of mostly torn in half Manhattan telephone books stacked on a coffee table.
*Press release for Avery Willsgate-Smythe “Caesura”
This press release reads almost like a manifesto for Fugate-Wilcox's own body of work. Also type-written in all caps on Hiawatha erasable bond, ivory paper, this release is missing the hand embossed letters JFG.
*The Art Gallery Guide
February 1971
pp 33, One-Man Shows
pp 35, map listing for Jean Freeman Gallery
pp 40, show listing for Avery Willsgate-Smythe “Caesura”
*Art Now: New York Gallery Guide
January 1971
Jean Freeman Gallery listing

Pioneering minimalist and postminimalist (Actual art) artist, Terry Fugate-Wilcox (1944- 2024) is renowned for his monumental works that transformed public spaces and challenged traditional art forms through the engagement of natural processes and elemental materials.