Once known as the world’s most notorious skid row, the Bowery has, over five centuries, had many incarnations: a Lenape footpath; a home to farms and cattle drives; the site of racetracks and pleasure gardens; and a center of popular entertainment with theaters, concert halls, tattoo parlors, and dime museums. More recently, it has been the spine of a thriving artists community which ushered in yet another new era for the street.
The exhibition underscores the Bowery as a site of ongoing experimentation and perpetual reinvention: the haunt of gangs, performers, entrepreneurs, and artists, and a host of remarkable characters from Peter Stuyvesant, PT Barnum, and Jacob Riis to William Burroughs, Eva Hesse, and Keith Haring. Known for its extremes and for its vibrant, risqué rowdiness, muscularity, and grit, the Bowery—a street the New Museum calls home—was once known as ‘Devil’s Mile’.
