Mary Boone, the legendary art dealer who once dominated New York's downtown gallery scene, sat behind the front desk at Lévy Gorvy Dayan on the Upper East Side during a recent autumn afternoon. With a green datebook open beside her iPhone, the 73-year-old moved between visitors and staff with the same brisk authority that defined her four decades in the business. The scene represented both a comeback and continuation for Boone, who now holds court uptown after previously ruling the downtown art world.
That afternoon, Boone was focused on solving a practical problem with the gallery's front door. The impressively tall doorway had endured triple the gallery's usual foot traffic, causing a hydraulic spring to give out and making the door creak with every opening. Undeterred, she coordinated with the gallery's head preparator to fix the issue while simultaneously working the crowd with ease, greeting old friends and striking up conversations with newcomers.
Boone's latest curatorial project, "Downtown/Uptown: New York in the Eighties," represents a significant return to her roots after more than five years away from major projects. The exhibition, running until December 13th and co-curated with Brett Gorvy, took nearly two years to assemble. It brings together more than 60 works by some of the decade's biggest names, including Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, Julian Schnabel, Cindy Sherman, Keith Haring, Richard Prince, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, revisiting the period that both launched and defined Boone's career.
The exhibition marks Boone's first major project following the closure of her namesake gallery and her 2019 tax-evasion conviction, which resulted in a 30-month prison sentence. She served 13 months, with her early release occurring at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. While the show carries echoes of her own story, including archival displays featuring vintage photos, press clippings, and exhibition flyers from the era, it is not explicitly autobiographical.
Reflecting on her evolution in the industry, Boone acknowledges how her approach has changed over the decades. "When I started out at 19, and all the way into my thirties, I think that I thought you [had to] be like a man to get ahead," she explains. "And now in my seventies, I think I just want to be myself." She credits her early mentor, dealer and collector Ileana Sonnabend, for shaping her sense of responsibility to the next generation.
Boone emphasizes the importance of mentorship, particularly for young women entering the art world. "Working with other people, it's really important to recognize our differences," she says. "When I started, I only had Ileana as a kind of mentor—and all the other big dealers were men. So I thought it would be great to be that to young women, what Ileana was to me."
After working at Bykert Gallery, Boone launched her namesake gallery at 420 West Broadway in 1977. By the mid-1980s, she had expanded uptown to 57th Street, a trajectory that mirrored New York's own transformation from grit to gloss. Her gallery quickly became one of the city's most talked-about destinations, with Sonnabend's gallery in the same building helping to cement 420 West Broadway as one of the city's most important art addresses.
During the 1980s and 90s, Boone dominated the downtown scene and earned the title "queen of the art scene" from New York magazine. Her impressive roster during this period included Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe, Barbara Kruger, Richard Prince, and Jasper Johns—artists whose work she helped catapult to international prominence. "I feel really lucky to have been alive at a time that produced so much talent," she reflects. "That's the thing—you can end up being a great dealer, but just not alive at the right time."
The "Downtown/Uptown" exhibition captures the explosive creativity of the 1980s while resonating with contemporary issues. It chronicles the Reagan years, the AIDS epidemic, and the culture wars, while echoing today's debates around censorship, representation, and artistic freedom. The show reflects how that transformative decade reshaped both the art world and broader cultural landscape.
Boone recalls how the rapid commercialization of contemporary art during the 1980s fundamentally changed the industry structure. "I remember Roy Lichtenstein saying to me, when we were mounting his mirror-painting show in 1991, that it was too bad the 1980s artists didn't really have time to mature," she explains. "Most of them started having a lot of attention drawn to them, even as early as their early thirties."
This acceleration contrasted sharply with previous generations of artists. "Lichtenstein didn't really start showing until his mid-forties, and what most artists did was teach and lecture—the financial climate was very different," Boone notes. "That really changed everything." She also observed how gallery-artist relationships evolved, with traditional loyalties giving way to more fluid arrangements as competition intensified.
Boone witnessed these dynamics firsthand when established practices began shifting in the 1980s. "I had only been Julian Schnabel's dealer for seven years, and I was doing a pretty good job—he left my gallery to go to a much bigger gallery, and that didn't happen before," she recalls. "Leo [Castelli] would never have taken an artist away from me. In these young galleries, they need to keep their artists in order to grow."
Despite recognizing the increased pressures facing smaller galleries, Boone remains characteristically direct in her advice to emerging artists. "Be really great. No alternative," she states emphatically. "I mean, you just have to be great." This philosophy reflects her no-nonsense approach that helped establish her reputation over five decades in the business.
Even after a half-century in the art world, Boone continues focusing on supporting the next generation and opening doors for others—even the ones that creak. Her current role at Lévy Gorvy Dayan represents not just a personal comeback, but also her ongoing commitment to nurturing new talent and maintaining her influence in an industry she helped shape. The "Downtown/Uptown" exhibition runs until December 18th at Lévy Gorvy Dayan in New York, serving as both a historical retrospective and a testament to Boone's enduring impact on the contemporary art world.
