Thomas VanDyke Gallery presents South Brooklyn Salon, an exhibition featuring work by 46 artists living and working in South Brooklyn. The works are arranged in the Salon Style and feature a multitude of media including oil painting, woodcut, hydrocal, cast polymer, and many others. The word “salon” is French, meaning “lounge”, “living room”, or “salle de séjour”, and was used to refer to official art exhibitions held at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, where artworks were arranged and attended by artists and aesthetes.
South Brooklyn is a place steeped in a history of welcoming all people. With the arrival of the ferry line in 1889, Irish, German, and Scandinavian immigrants made their way to Sunset Park and nearby neighborhoods. By the late 19th century, people from Italy, Greece and Poland had settled. In the 1940s, South Brooklyn witnessed an influx of Puerto Rican and other Latin American populations. And with a large number of Asian immigrants arriving in the 1980s, Sunset Park became home to Brooklyn’s first Chinatown.
That sense of exploration, of seeking out the new and the unknown and making it one's own, still thrives today. It’s also the guiding principle behind Thomas VanDyke Gallery. Rooted in a lifetime of discovering, photographing, and curating the finest art in the world, Thomas VanDyke seeks to shine a light on artists pushing the bounds of traditional ideas. Art that’s about seeing the world from a different angle.
South Brooklyn is a place that feels like home. Maybe it’s because there are so many families and a genuine feeling of belonging. Or maybe it’s the streets lined by huge yellowwood and American elm trees, overlooking views of the Manhattan skyline and New York Harbor. It feels like the truest version of New York City, and also a million miles away from the bustle.