Fulcrum Gallery (also known as "Shakespeare's Fulcrum" or "Fulcrum") was an American art gallery that opened underneath the Guggenheim Museum SoHo in New York City in January 1993, by Valerie Monroe Shakespeare. It was designed by her husband, Tery Fugate-Wilcox, who contributed the gallery motto: "Without Art we are but Monkeys with Car Keys". Fugate-Wilcox is credited as photographer on all of the gallery's ads, and was listed as one of the nineteen artists represented by the gallery. The owner said in an interview, that the name "Fulcrum", (written with angular "u's", like old Latin) came from Archimedes, "Give me a place to stand, a lever long enough and a fulcrum. and I can move the Earth". She said she hoped Fulcrum would become a "pivotal point in art history". Fulcrum Gallery was founded to exhibit Actual Art exclusively and did so until the effects of the attacks of 9/11 caused the gallery to close in February 2002.
History
The artist-oriented, artist-designed (by Tery Fugate-Wilcox) gallery was first located in a space at 144 Mercer Street, under the Guggenheim Museum, SoHo. It was most notable for unusual exhibitions: paintings made by the rain, of water-soluble paint; paintings of living grass; dwarf apple trees that grew into glass sculptures; living hermit crabs that moved into glass shells; a forest of two inch, by eight foot, clear tubes (hanging from the ceiling) containing water and one living plant each; paintings made with rust or fluffy gold, silver and copper leaf, (unburnished); drawings of dust on white canvas; and soot from candles or debris from explosions.
Artists Talk on Art
Fulcrum Gallery was home to ATOA (Artists Talk on Art), a non-profit organization that held public forums, panel discussions and open screenings for and about art and artists, every Friday night, at the gallery. Panels at the gallery included such notables as Christo and Jean Claude, Tery Fugate-Wilcox, Leon Golub, Arthur Dantos, Larry Rivers, Holly Solomon, Chuck Close, the Andy Warhol Foundation, Hilton Kramer and Ivan Karp, of O.K. Harris Gallery on subjects like "Come on. What's it really Worth", (how art gets its value); "Two Camels for your Canvas", (on bartering); "The Art Wars: Actual vs. Virtual", (Actual Art versus Virtual Art); "Art Virgins", (collectors on their first art purchases) and "Art & Ethics", (ethical decisions artists face). "Why'd You Make That?" (moderated by Tery Fugate-Wilcox with Chuck Close, on the artist's reasons behind making art).
Gallery Ads and Publicity
Shakespeare's Fulcrum Gallery became notable in the art world for its outrageous artist-designed ads by Tery Fugate-Wilcox in Art Now Gallery Guide and Art in America. The ads were shown by Robert Miller Gallery, as art. The ads were usually accompanied by a series of controversial articles in the Gallery Guide by gallery owner Valerie Monroe Shakespeare, including "Plaza Plop", "Artists of the Aughts", "Shock Schlock", "Dirt, Dust, Rust & Smut". After the exhibition at Robert Miller Gallery, publisher of New York Arts Magazine chose one of the photographs for the cover of their next issue. Valerie Shakespeare's nude torso was to be featured on the cover. The publisher, Abe Lubelski asked Tery Fugate-Wilcox to design the cover. His design is shown below. After stating he was "thrilled with the design" Lubelski asked Fugate-Wilcox to include thin profiles on either side of Shakespeare's image, of Mayor Juliani and Hans Haake, so that the magazine could cash in on a major controversy, at the time, over an artwork, "Nazi Garbage Cans", Haake was showing in the Whitney Museum, as a parody of the Mayor's conflict with the sanitation union. However, Lubelski then took it upon himself to reduce Shakespeare's figure to a circle, placed in the center of a Nazi flag, without Tery's or Ms. Shakespeare's permission, sparking a lawsuit, which became an episode on Peoples' Court in Nov. 2000.
One ongoing exhibition at Shakespeare's Fulcrum included an all glass beehive, by Robert Dugrenier, which sat in the gallery's front window, with a tube to the outdoors, for the bees to seek out all the rooftop gardens, returning to make wax and honey sculptures inside the hive, programmed by the artist to take the desired form. Many SoHo residents came in to thank the artist for enabling their gardens to bear fruit for the first time. The bees were covered by CNN, in a 4-minute spot that aired all over the world, HBO, Art Now Gallery Guide, New York City Guide, the New York Times, Where Magazine and New York Magazine.