Mark McDonald has always been at the epicenter of the world that is mid-century design, to a large extent, it is a world he created. For over forty years, Mark has pioneered whole fields of collecting, providing the scholarship and creating the market for mid-century furniture, studio jewelry, ceramics and Italian glass.
In 1983, Mark opened Fifty/50 with partners Mark Isaacson and Ralph Cutler. This groundbreaking gallery defined collectors’ taste. At the time, modern works were still largely overlooked; Mark and his partners collected and presented the rarest and most interesting pieces, often working with the makers themselves, to create compelling exhibitions accompanied by catalogs documenting the work.
In the 1990s, Mark opened Gansevoort Gallery, where he continued to curate collections and exhibitions of lasting impact. Over the years, he established relationships with artists and their estates becoming the go to authority on the designs of Art Smith, Ilonka Karasz and Leza McVey, among others. His enthusiasm for the material extended beyond the gallery floor to the back room where lucky visitors got to flip through Mark’s impressive design reference library and discuss the importance of works with him.
A connoisseur and wealth of knowledge, Mark became a resource for prominent collections across the globe—private and public alike. He inspired a generation of collectors and dealers introducing designers and their production to an audience that continues to grow. In 2002, Mark closed Gansevoort and established 330 gallery in Hudson, New York. Now, semi-retired, Marks splits his time between New York and Florida. He still collects, curates, supports, and shepherds the scholarship of mid-century design.
Three elements which have interested me in art are: line, color, and the concept of space and its use as a positive force.
Leon Polk Smith 1906–1996
One of the foremost pioneers of the minimalist movement, Leon Polk Smith transformed American painting with his hard-edged forms and bold colors. Smith was born in the American Indian territory of Chickasha, Oklahoma, in 1906. He was of Cherokee descent, and his parents instilled in him the concept of equality in an era marked by racism. In 1936, Polk Smith graduated from Oklahoma State College. He later moved to New York in 1936, where he began his Master’s degree in Art Education at Columbia University. While in New York, one of his professors took him to see A. E. Gallatin’s Museum of Living Art, a collection that consisted of contemporary art and sculpture that were “fresh and individual.” Polk Smith was struck by the neoplastic paintings of Piet Mondrian and the revolutionary sculptures of Constantin Brâncuși and Jean Arp. While inspired by these modern artists, he would later go far beyond their rigid philosophies by employing new forms to create his monumental works.
In 1941, Polk Smith held his first show at the Uptown Gallery in New York. While showing his paintings in the city, he became close with a group of artists that included Carmen Herrera and Barnett Newman who strove to rethink geometric abstraction in their paintings. During the 1960s, Polk Smith was sympathetic to the burgeoning Civil Rights movement and he created paintings in support of equality. He began to play with the idea of fragmentation starting in the 1970s, as he incorporated his love of the American landscape and the night sky into his paintings. Polk Smith passed away in 1996. The same year, the Brooklyn Museum organized a monumental Polk Smith exhibition. Polk Smith’s work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, among many others.
