There was a time when gallery exhibitions stayed on view for far shorter stretches than they typically do today. Jasper Johns’s landmark debut with Leo Castelli on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in 1958 lasted only from January 20 to February 8.
By 1981, Robert Longo’s “Men in the Cities” drawings were on display for just three weeks at Metro Pictures in SoHo. Compared with that, today’s standard exhibition run is often five or six weeks, or even longer.
Nan Goldin’s current show at Gagosian in London, for instance, has already been up for two months. The contrast highlights how much longer most gallery presentations now remain on view than in earlier decades.
