“Kissing Doesn’t Kill: Greed and Indifference Do.” –Gran Fury*

Corn fields and empty roads, heroin needles and experimental art: two worlds that seemingly couldn’t be further. Two worlds which have led to Marvin Taylor’s ability to curate “The Downtown Collection” at New York University’s Fales Library.


The collection’s birth, and Marvin’s place in it, both sprang from practical concerns born from undesirable situations. But, they have resulted in astounding success.

“If you’re the one lone fag in your school study hall can be really hard,” said Marvin. So, he spent a lot of time in the library shelving books. This eventually led to his position as curator of the Downtown Collection in Fales Library at NYU. There he purchased the only art the school could afford: art that no one else wanted.

Over 15 years later this collection has become the largest, most important and most comprehensive grouping of art from New York’s Downtown scene of 1961 to 1991. Some of the major artists are David Wojnarowicz, Robert Mapplethorpe, Fred McDarrah and Jimmy De Sana.

The exhibit, which closed April 3, showed the collection he has made full of audience-shocking art. Its "shock value" lies in its nudity, queer themes and easy-to-miss use of traditional techniques in revolutionary ways.

Marvin’s emotional connection to this art began early. “I was desperately trying to figure out what was going on in New York,” Marvin said. “I was 14 and that’s a really good age to get into the punk scene: you’re pissed off at everyone.”

Growing up Quaker in a small town where most of the residents were related taught Marvin to be naturally rebellious and ornery. He said that these traits connected him to artists in the New York art scene. Their rampant crime, drug use and desire to buck the big-money art world of the 57^th Street galleries inspired him.

The year 1987 brought Marvin to New York but “by then the scene was dying off because of stocks crashing and leaving artists with no support,” he said. AIDS was also decimating the experimental art that had fascinated Marvin his entire life.

Despite that, this balding, bearded man with earrings and a silver and turquoise ring—temporarily crippled by a cast on his left foot—hopped around his exhibit at the Grey Art Gallery.



“I want people to see that there is a history that we take for granted,” said Marvin. “That [the artists] had to rethink how they’d been programmed. That they made no money and got no respect but that they changed our culture forever.”




*activist spin-of of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power.” Quote comes from one of its 1989 posters hung in the gallery.