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Excerpts from:
Consider the Alternatives
20 Years of Contemporary Art at Hallwalls
(© Hallwalls, Inc. 1996. by permission)
Edited by Ronald Ehmke
with Elizabeth Licata
(Ronald Ehmke is a performance artist and writes criticism for High Performance, Artpapers and
other journals and Elizabeth Licata is the curator at the Castellani Museum in Niagara Falls.)

When Robert Longo and Charles Clough, together with a loose collection of like-minded friends,
turned a former ice house into an artist-run alternative space in Buffalo in 1974, they were well aware
that similar organizations were springing up all over the United States and Canada. But they could
not have known that within ten years, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center would be heralded in the
art press as “the birthplace of post-modernism,” with a reputation for presenting challenging work by
artists, mediamakers, performers, musicians, and writers like Vito Acconci, Kathy Acker, Laurie
Anderson, Barbara Bloom, Eric Bogosian, Jonathan Borofsky, Lester Bowie, Glenn Branca, Chris
Burden, Yoshiko Chuma, Tony Conrad, Robert Creeley, Nancy Dwyer, Ethyl Eichelberger, Karen
Finley, Eric Fischl, Philip Glass, Mike Glier, Jack Goldstein, Dan Graham, John Greyson, Group
Material, Holly Hughes, Robert Irwin, Isaac Julien, Mike Kelley, Komar & Melamid, Robbie
McCauley, Tim Miller, Joseph Nechvatal, Tony Oursler, Rachel Rosenthal, David Salle, Andres
Serrano, Paul Sharits, Cindy Sherman, Michael Snow, Sun Ra, David Wojnarowicz, and Michael
Zwack (among literally thousands of others), often early in their careers.
Yet there is much more to the story of Hallwalls than any such list of names could ever suggest.
Consider the Alternatives takes a candid, in-depth look at the origins, evolution, and continued
survival of one specific “alternative” over two decades, from the widely varied perspectives of more
than 100 visiting artists, current and former staff, critics, collectors, and audience members. The
book combines newly commissioned essays and interviews, an extensive timeline, photo
documentation, catalogue statements, reviews, journal entries, and other archival materials to
construct a complex portrait not only of Hallwalls and its hometown, but of 20 years of changes in
the cultural and political climate of the country at large.
Consider the Alternatives is emblematic of many projects to emerge from Hallwalls over the last 20
years. Indeed, in many ways the book mirrors the organization itself:
1) it is the collective product of many individuals working in uneasy alliance;
2) it exists in part because the current staff found funding for it, and in part because people simply
felt like such a thing should exist;
3) it exemplifies a trend in the artworld at large (many centers which emerged around the same time
have produced or are currently preparing similar retrospectives);
4) it questions its own authority at every turn;
5) it started out small and got very big very fast.
But Hallwalls is more than the sum of its factions; the stories retold here are are not simply
self-important exercises in nostalgia. While there are many ways in which Hallwalls is utterly unique
(surely no other organization in the country attempts to juggle so many different disciplines), it is
also part of a larger social and cultural force. I’m particularly struck by Arlene Raven’s premise that
the United States literally constitutes “alternative space”: the implications of that disarmingly simple
statement resound through these pages.
1974-78: The Early Years
Anthony Bannon
Hallwalls was established in 1974 in an old ice packing warehouse at 30 Essex Street that had been
taken over by a Buffalo artist and activist, Larry Griffis, for use as studios and living spaces for
artists, operating as the Ashford Hollow Foundations. Robert Longo, a student at State University
College at Buffalo (commonly referred to as Buffalo State College), and Charles Clough, who sat in
on classes at the State University of New York at Buffalo (UB), decided to turn the walls in the
corridor between their studios into a gallery; thus Hallwalls. And then they moved out, into a larger
communal space in the complex, and the gallery expanded into their rooms.
Hallwalls founders, while administrative innocents, listened to the sirens of their time, borrowed
from the structures of Artists Space in New York and A Space in Toronto and sought advice of those
around them. Linda Cathcart, then Assistant Curator at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and her
colleagues Director Robert T. Buck and Curators Douglas G. Schultz and James Wood, provided
early mediation to the thrones of federal and state public funding, and the museum became a ready,
highly visible collaborator in a series of artist’s installations, exhibitions, and lecture presentations.
“They always asked the right questions,” recalls Cathcart. “‘How do we do that?’ they'd say. ‘We
want to do it right. You know how to do it; tell us.’ And you couldn’t give them half an answer,
because they wouldn’t go away. They weren’t against anything. They wanted to know how to apply
for grants, how to hang shows, how to work publicity, how to do fine work. They didn’t make it
into a polemic situation, and they did the same thing to artists, too. They wanted to know just how to
conduct themselves. They’d come over to the Albright and make me see things, at Artpark, at
Hallwalls...and we got to be friends, interested in some of the same artists.”
While some area artists complained they had inadequate representation in the Albright-Knox, the
upstarts from Hallwalls joined forces with the city’s major art institution to invite interesting visitors
to Buffalo. Clough’s menu: “You sniff it out, you go find it, you eat it, and then you are it . Culture
consumption. We just wanted to be artists. It was a way to deal with being in a provincial situation.”
Gathering and sharing information was a high priority for the young administrators. Dr. Gerald
O’Grady, director of both the Center for Media Studies and Media Study/Buffalo, provided access to
media tools, screenings and ideas. Longo and Clough also made visits to the daily press and enlisted
critics’ enthusiasm—which, for many visiting artists and most regional artists resulted in their first
critical notices.
Visual artist Nancy Dwyer first encountered the gallery during the winter of 1975. She was attracted
not only by the art, but by the serious fun the place offered, and the drive and commitment of Longo
and Clough. “What I perceived, at least at the time, was that most of the energy came from Robert
and Charlie, that they were both really strong characters, and they both talked a lot, and they both
had a lot of direction and were both really knowledge thirsty. I really admired and really liked that,”
Dwyer recalls. “The scene was kind of hippie-ish. It was very casual, witty, not private. Anybody
could come and go and be a part of of it as they pleased. ...We all drank a lot and smoked a lot of
pot and hung out and had fun. There was a lot of music, which was always really loud. ...But also,
these guys were really serious. They were really serious about ideas. I had been in a lot of situations
before where there was a lot of hanging out. But it was clear that Robert and Charlie were really
ambitious guys—and I don’t mean that in a bad way. I mean intellectually ambitious. And that was
really exciting. That’s what I liked about it most. It seemed like things were really getting done .”
Dwyer thought of Clough as the arbiter of information, filled with facts about art history and
contemporary practice, while Cindy Sherman was quiet and mysterious, though her art seemed most
developed. Dwyer, like many others in the Hallwalls circle, was searching for a place to be
comfortable, “where people were talking and had some real attitude.”
Michael Zwack’s perceptions are similar. “Somebody said there’s a place where they rent studios to
artists, and I went there, and I met Charlie a few weeks later, who was another guy who was doing
stuff. Plain and simple. He was doing things. Somehow Charlie and I got along; we had similar
ideas ...we were kind of unaffiliated; a lot of the people were affiliated with the educational system.
They kind of represented academia in a way, where Charlie and a few other people were just rogues.
I think that’s why we hooked up. ...And then Robert showed up, and here was another person who
was doing it. Cindy was there, and there was another person who was doing it. It was interesting
because here was this kind of support behind the desire to make art. I think that was one of the most
important things that happened there. Because Robert and Charlie set up this system to bring New
York and other people, other artists, [to Buffalo]. they also set up this educational system. And I
learned a lot there because I found other artists they brought. We found other artists who were just
interested in making art. That’s what we talked about there, making art. And that was pretty much the
daily activity. ...What I was doing at that point was just making work, on an intuitive basis. I had no
idea where it would go, what it could do. When Charlie and Robert talked about opening a gallery, I
didn’t really think it was an idea that would work, but as soon as people started painting walls, I
painted walls. It was that kind of thing. ...I was happy to be there. It was a dialogue; it wasn’t a
critique. ...It was the idea of freedom, being free.”
Clough had been involved at A Space in Toronto—listening, he remembers, “to the kingpins
conspire about how they’re going to get the money and how they’re going to get the cool talent to
come, how they’re going to get their own work done, and how they are going to further their
careers.” It was a scenario that would be repeated in Buffalo. “We, the Hallwalls conspirators,
realized that it was a way to focus attention and to get it for ourselves and at the same time serve the
community.”
Longo was active in the Visual Arts Board at Buffalo State College, and Clough was friendly with
Judy Treible and Joe Hryvniak at the University of Buffalo, who were involved with music and the
university’s public radio station, WBFO. Their connections led to modest student funds. “Then
Larry Griffis’ brother Jack came to live at the building, and he was like an older guy.” Clough
recalled. “He had a great life in Europe, he had sort of an independent income, and at that point he
was disillusioned and came back to Buffalo with nothing to do , so we told him that he should help
us with the gallery ...and that was it, that was Hallwalls. Then it was just programming and keeping
the core group happy. ...Robert and I figured a lot of it out, but if people came up with ideas for
programming, we did ‘em.”
Creating Hallwalls was fun, and a struggle. “Those were our bateau lavoir days,” Clough continued.
“You know, funky youth. That’s what we had: sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll. I mean, it wasn’t
without tons of angst. A lot of heartbreak. In retrospect, now that Cindy Sherman is a genius, and
Longo is taking Hollywood, and the others are up there with ‘em, it was magic. I can think of two
dozen half-hour television shows, soap opera kind of stuff, that we were living through. Great
dinners, great drunken nights, dancing, other stuff, intellectual stuff. Realizing dreams, ambitions.
...It sounds like it was fun. It was totally poverty-ridden. I waited on tables on weekends. We didn’t
get our first grant as an institution until the fall of ‘75. ...You see the trade-offs. It wasn’t about
minimum wage or benefits. The prize was access to whomever was visiting. you get to talk to the
famous artist. That’s cool. You get to have dinner with the famous artist. That’s cool. That was what
it was all about. So any kind of power manipulating or whatever was simply to be able to choose
whomever was coming and then to be able to sit next to them.”
And the artists came. Longo, Sherman and Bertolo worked at Artpark, and they invited artists who
visited the park to Hallwalls. Clough played on the hometown angle to encourage Robert Mangold,
who was born in the Buffalo area, to return. They asked Lynda Benglis, and they went to pick her
up at the airport in an old broken-down van—”like we were out of Zap comix”—and Benglis
“looked like a star. Her expression was slightly aghast when she saw us. ...We were totally
oblivious; we were not fashion plates,” Clough laughs.
Then as quickly as it was formed the original Hallwalls began to dissolve. Zwack and Dwyer left
town first, in late 1976, then Sherman received an NEA artist’s grant, and she and Longo moved to
New York in 1977. “I was feeling quite stranded,” Clough recalls. The remaining founder turned his
attention to legal incorporation (which entailed a split from Ashford Hollow for logistical reasons)
and the fate of CEPA Gallery, which was about to shut down after its director left. Hallwalls was
incorporated in 1977; Clough and Pierce Kamke briefly became officers of CEPA, which maintained
its separate identity while moving next door to Hallwalls in the Essex Street complex. The following
year, Clough, too, left Buffalo.
In a 1982 interview, Jim Reinish, former director of Visual Arts for the New York State Council on
the Arts (and, later, associate director of Zabriskie Gallery in New York)’ commented on the success
of the Hallwalls group . “The incredible thing is that they have all done so well, so quickly. I don’t
know of another group of artists who have had that kind of impact.
Blame it on the Spaghetti: Reflections on the first five years
1. Critical Mass
Judy Treible (Director of UB’s Gallery 219 circa 1974; now employed by Gannett News Service):
The early 1970s in Buffalo were times of change and turmoil. Ideas from the counter culture were
sweeping into Western New York despite the best efforts of the keepers of the status quo to shut
them out. Vietnam protesters had closed down the UB campus, head shops and waterbed stores
sprang up on Allen Street, long hair for men and no bras for women were badges of courage,
middle-class kids chose subsistence living so they could hang out. People became more receptive to
trying new things and some found the courage and energy to create things independently.
It’s my feeling that this kind of free flowing atmosphere was fertile ground for the birth of Hallwalls.
That at the time, it was perfectly within reason for Charlie Clough to think that the scruffy fiberboard
walls between artists’ studio doors could become a gallery and that people would want to come.
There was also a critical mass of interested, committed and slightly off-kilter people who wanted to
participate.
[Excerpted from e-mail to Ronald Ehmke, 1995.]
Charles Clough: Buffalo is cold, depressed and depressing. I grew up there and left it for art school
in NYC. I dropped out at the time of the Cambodian invasion and Kent State killings and returned to
Buffalo saturated with the issues of that time. I wanted to do something where I was from.
This and subsequent quotes excerpted from statement in Hallwalls: 5 Years catalogue, 1980.]
Linda Cathcart (curator at the Albright-Knox during the early years of Hallwalls): Clough, a bit older
than [Robert] Longo (23 to be exact), had traveled to various places, looking at things and making art
since about 1970... Longo, 21 and originally from Long Island, having also drifted around a bit—he
even went to college in Texas for a while—was then a student at the State University College at
Buffalo, where he was president of something called the Visual Arts Board [,]...a small group of art
students encouraged, particularly by the painter and instructor Joseph Piccillo, toward the
expenditure of some funds wrangled from the administration for “the arts.”
...A fellow conspirator, Judy Treible, a student of graphic design, had been coordinator [of UB’s
Gallery 219]. Judy provided a link through which they could transform an apathetic structure by
guerrilla tactics along with genuine enthusiasm.. This example was to mark the method by which
Hallwalls generally got things accomplished. The attitude of those participants was then, as it is now,
“more is better,” “never say no to a possibility,” “we have more ideas than we can possibly use as
projects,” and “if there’s a place no one’s using, we’ll take it.”
Charles Clough: It was a stolen idea from Artists Space [in Manhattan] and A Space in Toronto. I’d
gone to Pratt in Brooklyn in 1969, and I didn’t know what the art world was at that point. One of the
teachers at Pratt turned me on to Artforum, and that’s when I got an idea of what the art world
consisted of: that there were these trade magazines that serviced the galleries and then there were the
artists who did whatever they wanted to do and then there were also the museums. But the part of the
art world that I didn’t know about was that the artists were alive and that they made money. I read the
magazine to find out where the galleries were, but I didn’t really go around to them in that first year.
I quit Pratt after one year, in 1970....
Being in a provincial situation is a little stifling. Once you figure out what the system is and what the
components are, all you need is a map and a sense of what your mission is. Coming up with your
mission is the very tricky part. I started to look at Toronto because I thought I might not want to live
in the U.S. with regard to the draft situation. It turned out I didn’t have to move—I had a great draft
number, but this Ontario College was a lot cheaper than Pratt.
I wasn’t connected. I thought of the experience [of returning to Buffalo] as taking my existence
down to a caveman level, making a fire in the courtyard and cooking meat. It was rudimentary. It
was a transition from the illustration-type work I was doing as a teenager. I got interested in wood
and Brancusi-type shapes, carved wood and stuff. But in reading what was in the magazines I
realized that what I was doing was totally wrong in relation to minimalism and I felt challenged to
understand what this cutting edge of the avant-garde was all about, with conceptual art, minimalism,
earth art and body art and all this stuff. Getting turned on to the magazines by this one teacher was
crucial because all the art school stuff was like, so what? The dialogue of record was in the
magazines, so you plug into that and then you’ve got what’s going on in New York.
This group of young artists in Toronto were forming A Space, which seemed to be in response to
conceptual art, body art, earth art. And there was Avalanche magazine which serviced that industry.
Willoughby Sharp and Liza Bear ran the magazine, and they helped send people up to Toronto. I
plugged into that group, and then a couple of years later that was who we were plugged into at
Hallwalls. I pursued other lines of discipline, sources of talent, but anyway there was a network
going on between New York and Toronto, San Francisco and Los Angeles and so on, and alternative
places, alternative cultures sort of sprung out of the counterculture sensibility that was happening in
the late sixties. So I did the one year of school in Toronto that allowed me to see how the city ran,
what their cultural institutions were, cutting-edge kind of stuff.
[Quotes taken from a September 1993 interview with Elizabeth Licata.]
2. If You Build it...
Linda Cathcart: The group met once a week “to deal with a list of what must be taken care of,
compiled by Longo and Clough,” I quote from an early prospectus. A gentle dictatorship to be sure,
but one which came to change hands from project to project as the young group tested its abilities and
strengths. A true sense of community formed rapidly and so too a sense of responsibility. Among the
duties of the “curators” was documentation by photographic and videotaped means, beginning and
keeping a library and holding open forums to “see and discuss each other’s work, and share
information about the work we have seen, new materials or techniques, etc.” I know it sounds
impossibly idealistic, but it did work. People showed up, they looked, they listened but most of all
they stayed to help and then grew to participate in an independent way. Hallwalls seemed to be open
to anyone doing any project, if everyone thought it was a good idea. And since no one had seen
much, everyone thought just about everything was a good idea, sometimes really terrific, very rarely
awful or boring, and the place still works that way today.
[3. ...They Will Come
Michael Zwack: Artists would come in and we’d figure out what to do to them, I mean with them.
But it wasn’t like there were thousands of people waiting to come to stuff. We had very intimate
events. Artists came and relaxed; it wasn’t fast paced. They didn’t have to escape anybody.
Charles Clough: The fact that [many many contemporary film and video artists, including the faculty
of UB’s Center for Media Study] worked in other disciplines, like Richard Serra was making
videotapes and sculpture [was a big influence]. Our sense of avant-garde was kind of
trans-disciplinary. ... I think we were a genuinely critical audience, we were selecting things that
were timely and of interest to us. We had to confront things as artists.
Kevin Noble (visual artist): Although Hallwalls got its name from the fact that it was originally the
hallway between a series of artists’ studios, I always thought of it more as a living room than a
hallway. Form the beginning it was a place where a community of artists, writers, musicians, and
filmmakers came to meet and hang out. Some of the artists lived in their studios within the complex
and this added to the sense of it being like a living room in a very large house. Usually at sometime
between 10 and 11 a.m., the artists and others who made up the community would start drifting into
30 Essex Street, the coffee pot was filled and refilled as the day’s activities began. There was always
something that needed to be done.
As an artist-run gallery the distinctions between the making of art and the presentation of art blended
into everyday activities such as eating, listening to music and watching television. Inevitably the visit
of an out-of-town artist for an exhibition or performance would include a large communal spaghetti
dinner. If the weather was nice it often meant a barbecue in the parking lot. Every week on Thursday
night at 9 from 10 to 20 people showed up to watch Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman on the television
upstairs.
George Howell: Whenever I think about the early Hallwalls, I remember that funny group picture
Charlie Clough made out of a photo sequence of fifteen or twenty of us moving en masse, around the
Ashford Hollow Foundation courtyard. With our enthusiasm and nerviness and sheer energy, we
could have been the 300 faces staring off the cover of the first, and only, issue of Hallwalls’
newsletter.
It’s hard to look back and assess what was going on in 1974-75, because so much happened. I know
dozens of stories about artists and openings, fights over grants and catalogues, jealousies and
teamwork, some very devastating memories and some very beautiful ones. I can’t separate the place
from my friendship with Robert, Charlie, Cindy Sherman, Diane Bertolo, Kevin Noble, Linda
Neaman, Mike Zwack, Larry Lundy, Gary Judkins, Peg Brady, Lee Eiferman, Paul Lemberg, and a
lot of other folks. Hallwalls was a gallery qua commune qua family.
4. A Living Room in a Very Large House
Joe Hryvniak: Charlie would fly through film: analyze space, capture stuff. his work area was
always so cool; he’d collect rooms of stuff—automobile paint finnish, things like that—and he’d pile
these layers of stuff on top of each other, photograph that, then paint on that. He was the most visual
person in the world.
6. “Noise”: The First Report Card
Hal Crowther, “Ingenious Artistic Introspection,” The Buffalo Evening News, June 8, 1976: Much
of the art produced at Hallwalls can be described as ephemeral. A crowbar, a broom and another
layer of whitewash and it’s time to start all over. That’s hardly a damning criticism. No one with any
sense ever tries to define art anymore, but we all know it doesn’t have to be something you guard
with a gun. ...
In the current group show of 30-odd resident artists at Hallwalls, there’s no feeling that the
exhibitors are competing with each other for attention or commercial advantage. Hallwalls is
something different.
7. Growing Up, Leaving Home
Charles Clough: The funding agencies wanted to give the money directly to Hallwalls and not to
Ashford Hollow. Ashford Hollow had its whole package and persona and operation and so on, and
the funding agencies said, “If you want to survive you have to have a board. They were willing to
string us along when we were cute and naive and all that stuff, but you get the point ...it’s like
growing up. We had to get our shit together.
Kevin Noble: I remember helping draw a Sol LeWitt wall drawing at Hallwalls and then a month
later covering it up with layer after layer of white latex paint in preparation for the next exhibition. It
was a time of questioning and analyzing the nature of art itself. Hallwalls and the artists associated
with it were engaged in this on a daily basis. Everyone was making art and helping in the
presentation of other people’s art; the work and fun never stopped.
Of course, nothing remains static, particularly in the arts. The community and direction of Hallwalls
was constantly changing as people left for New York, Chicago, and other places, and new artists
became involved in showing work and helping to run Hallwalls.
Charles Clough: Michael Zwack and Nancy Dwyer were the first to leave, and then Cindy got her
NEA grant and she decided to split, and as soon as Robert heard that Cindy was leaving, he couldn’t
be left behind. ...It was kind of traumatic because Robert had that sort of charismatic personality and
I felt close to him. When he left I felt that I’d lost...that co-conspirator kind of thing.
...We just wanted to be artists. [Hallwalls] was a way to deal with being in a provincial situation. I
knew that I had to be in New York. It is so expensive, and it was so expensive. It was a
circumstantial thing about my personal development, my resources, and these other talented people
like Longo, Sherman, Dwyer, Zwack: trying to take these opportunities and use them. Using
self-interest to generate lots of subsidiary benefits. ...I’m very interested in the front lines of cultural
institutions and how they can serve the communities they’re part of. It’s like generating power from
the Falls.
9. “Hallwalls: Five Years”: A Wider Audience
Marcia Tucker (Director of New York’s New Museum when the touring show “Hallwalls: Five
Years” opened there in 1980): Hallwalls is an example of a growing phenomena throughout the
country—informal, highly energetic and diverse artists’ organizations. ...In the few years since their
involvement with Hallwalls, many of these artists had their work seen in more public contexts, while
the work of others is being shown outside of Buffalo for the first time. ...By providing an
“alternative” museum context for this kind of work, we hope to bring it to the attention of a wider
audience, thereby expanding and furthering our commitment to emerging artists and experimental
work
[Excerpt from catalogue essay, 1980.]
William Zimmer, “Where Buffalo Roams,” The Soho News, July 16, 1980: Let’s take the wraps off
the container and see what’s inside. The works of the co-founders is near the entrance and signals
another Hallwalls hallmark—animation. Robert Longo is in love with the movies, especially B
movies, but he’s also fond of the pure geometry of the suprematists and the nobility of Greek friezes.
All combine in his reliefs of combat: in one here, two youths and jeans and short jackets grapple
actively.
Charles Clough is an animated voyeur; his funnel-shaped paintings have a thousand eyes. Clough
introduces another binding characteristic of Hallwalls art—the shorn-off, frayed look.
10. The End of a Beginning
Linda Cathcart: What of the art of the artists who grew with and were nurtured by Hallwalls? We
now have the occasion to look backward five years and see that the artists surrounded themselves
with good energetic ideas and that the quality of their own work is remarkably high. Hallwalls is
made up of Photographers, painters, sculptors, video artists, performers, dancers, Xerox artists,
poets, writers, composers, filmmakers. The resumes of these artists are now 5-6 pages long where
once they were very brief. Now they are nationally exposed—among them Michael Zwack and
Charlie Clough are now showing on 57th Street in New York City; Anne Turyn, Biff Henrich and
Ellen Carey at P.S. 1; Ann Rosen at Franklin Furnace; Kevin Noble at the Kitchen; Robert Longo at
Metro Pictures; Nancy Dwyer at the Drawing Center; Tony Conrad at the Filmmaker’s Co-op; Diane
Bertolo at Artists Space; and on this occasion, all together at the New Museum.
People grow at different paces and it will be a long time before any of us, including the artists
themselves, know what will become of the profession they have chosen, but each of them can know
now that they participated in something which can be measured and judged today. Hallwalls is an
organization which works and satisfies, which in itself is a good thing, but it is also one which
questions, provokes, and provides more than it it expects to. How and why? Partly due to time and
place, but more importantly because of hard work care, devotion, and love.