"We are thrilled to welcome Eric Firestone's important program to Palm Beach," says Sarah Gavlak. "His decades-long commitment to shedding light on underrepresented artists aligns perfectly with New Wave's ethos. It will help us advance our mission, which is to expand the dialogue around contemporary art and provide a platform to learn, discover, and grow as a community."

Since Eric Firestone Gallery opened in East Hampton in 2010, and on Great Jones Street in New York City in 2015, its mission has been to investigate the ever-evolving canon of post-war American art. In this short period, the gallery has re-introduced the art world to several major artists working in the 1950s through the ‘80s and placed their work in museums across the United States and globally. Several of these artists will be the subject of, or included in, major museum exhibitions over the next two years. A New York Minute will reflect the gallery’s program and mission.

Another focus of the gallery’s program has been 1950s and ‘60s abstraction by women. Currently, women artists are breaking sales records and achieving major institutional recognition for their role in post-war abstraction and Abstract Expressionism. Jeanne Reynal (1903–1983) brought Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist ideas to mosaic. She was dedicated to the ways in which hand-cut stones, set on a bias, could reflect light. At the Museum of Modern Art, NY, a Reynal mosaic is now on view beside a Willem de Kooning. Elise Asher (1912–2004), a painter-poet, incorporates calligraphic text within atmospheric clouds of brushwork. Pat Passlof (1928–2011) created abstract paintings that responded to memory, experience, and place without narrative. In December 2023 one of her most monumental works was acquired by Crystal Bridges Museum; paintings were recently acquired by both MoMA and the Whitney Museum, NY. The gallery’s presentation at Frieze Masters London 2022 of Passlof was critically acclaimed and sold out.

Several artists also work in a figurative mode, moving between fantasy and reality. These include Mimi Gross (b. 1940), Sally Cook (b. 1932), and Jane Kogan (b. 1939). Gross is known for her portraits and group portraits of friends, family, and people she encounters in the city and her extensive travels. Her paintings have a poignant expressiveness and connection to the subject. Hers is a world of bold, unapologetic color. Gross’s work can be found in the major collections across the country including the Jewish Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, all in New York; the Minneapolis Museum of Art, MN, the Art Institute of Chicago, IL, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA. Sally Cook is a painter and poet whose fantastical approach to portraiture and still life reflects her incisive and witty observations of the world.  Her work was surveyed in 2020 at the University of Buffalo Art Galleries. Jane Kogan’s 7-foot-tall “Amazon” paintings were influenced by the feminist movement of the late 1960s and 70s. The series of women in powerful stances draws inspiration from art historical sources, the feminine divine, and the artist’s imagination—their collective effect is that of a phalanx of warriors wielding weapons both material and spiritual.  Kogan’s work was the subject of a retrospective at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum in the summer of 2023.