The Real Estate Show was a squatted exhibition by New York artists' group Colab, on the subject of landlord speculation in real estate[1] held on New Year's Day (January 1, 1980) in a vacant city-owned building at 123 Delancey Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City.[2] [3]
The squatting action followed a year of campaigning to rent the property for an exhibition space from officials of the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD).[4]
On New Year's Day, the show was officially opened to the public.[5] It was to be a two-week occupation/exhibit but was quickly closed down by the police. This brief exhibition went on to inspire a much larger and longer lasting Colab exhibition called The Times Square Show.
On the morning of January 2, the Colab artists discovered the storefront padlocked shut and their work locked inside. Phone calls revealed it to be the doing of HPD. The Real Estate Show had been open exactly one day.[6]
On January 8, the artists, accompanied by art dealer Ronald Feldman and German conceptual artist Joseph Beuys, at the invitation of Art Corp. Inc. co-founder John DiLeva-Halpern, assembled at the site to protest its closing in the company of reporters from the New York Times, SoHo Weekly News, and the East Village Eye.[7] There was a photograph taken of Beuys at the front door of The Real Estate Show standing with John DiLeva-Halpern, Ronald Feldman, Alan W. Moore and Joseph Nechvatal taken that day.[8]
On January 11 city workers swept into 123 Delancey, cleared out the exhibited work and trucked it to an uptown warehouse. It was not until a few days later that artists were granted entry into the warehouse to take their artworks home.[9]
On January 16, a deal was reached with the city that gave birth to ABC No Rio when the artists were given control of nearby 156 Rivington Street as a compromise.[10]
In early 2014, there were four concurrent art exhibitions in New York City around The Real Estate Show: at James Fuentes Gallery, ABC No Rio, the Lodge Gallery, and Cuchifritos Gallery/Essex Street Market.[11] [12] [13] [14] [15]
In June 2017, Becky Howland & Matthias Mayer curated The Real Estate Show at Spor Klubu in Berlin, drawing from documentation of the original Real Estate Show (1980) from the Archive Collection of the extant project space ABC No Rio. Included in the show were Robert Cooney, Mitch Corber, Peter Fend, Coleen Fitzgibbon, Bobby G (aka Robert Goldman), Ilona Granet, Becky Howland, Christof Kohlhofer, Gregory Lehmann, Ann Messner, Peter Mönnig, Alan W. Moore, Joseph Nechvatal, Cara Perlman, Scott Pfaffman, Christy Rupp and Robin Winters. In conjunction with this show, another exhibition called The Real Estate Show Extended/Berlin: Group exhibition on the subject of Gentrification, Real Estate Speculation and Selling out the City was presented at Kunstpunkt Berlin. This show included many Berlin artists along with four original members of the Real Estate Show (1980): Becky Howland, Peter Mönnig, Alan Moore, and Joseph Nechvatal. Howland, Mönnig, Moore and Nechvatal also participated in a panel discussion on Real Estate and Art on June 3, 2017 that was moderated by Howard McCalebb of Dada Post, Berlin.[16]