My First New York by New York Magazine

of all the films I am craving to see— 2001: A Space Odyssey , The Odd Couple , Romeo and Juliet —already sensing that as I walk an improvised ritual blossoms between me and the city, and that this must be the stuff of magic and love.
    This is your walk and this is your moment and this is your time capsule, says the city every evening as I leave the mailroom and step outside to find the lights of Lincoln Square. This is the moment when you can take me and mold me and make me in your image, and I’ll be what you wish and I’ll take after all your wants and whims, I’ll woo you if I have to till you get used to me and love me. But after this I’ll harden into what you see now and what you want now, and I may never change again. Buildings will come and go, and today’s movie theaters will be gone soon enough, youwill grow older too, but come the evening of every day, you’ll find me as you find me now, waiting for you to step out into the speckled evening to recall, once again, as ever again, that you and I are of one kind. This is your New York.

M ARY B OONE
    art gallerist
arrived: 1970
    I remember that the first exhibition I was part of was by Chuck Close, and that he sat in my office during the opening listening to the World Series. That was at Klaus Kertess’s gallery, the Bykert Gallery. Lynda Benglis, who was my teacher at Hunter College, said, “Oh, if you need a job, my boyfriend owns a gallery.” Because I thought I was going to come here and workat a museum, but I did that, and it really seemed so lifeless.
    Klaus closed the gallery after ten years because it was getting to be too successful! He said it was too much of a business. It’s so different now. In the early days I remember Brice Marden had seven one-person shows and never sold a painting. Even when I showed Julian Schnabel, it took me two years to sell the first painting.
    Julian was the first artist to leave my gallery, and I was heartbroken. It was like the spring of 1984, and I was sitting in my office, crying. In his explanation at the time—you know, it’s like anything, probably things change with the telling every time. But in those days, what he said was that he wanted to be separated. He said, “How many artists do you have in the Carnegie International?” And it was basically the whole gallery. And he said, “Well, if I go to Pace, I’m the only artist from that gallery in the Carnegie.” He wanted a kind of separateness from me, but also from his generation. He wanted to be seen as an individual. We’re still good friends; I think he’s a fantastic filmmaker. I also have a different perception of this, because I think that life is about shared experiences, and if you have an experience with an artist, you never lose that. It’s like if you’re married and you have a child with somebody, you’re never, ever really separated. And the child is the art. So anyway, I was sitting in my office crying, and Jean-Michel Basquiat comes in. And he was so sweet! He was so upset I was sitting there crying. He put his arms around me, and he said, “Mary, don’t worry. I’m gonna be much more famous than Julian.” And then he walked out, and he came back in with a huge watermelon, which he plunked on my desk, and we ate.

D IANE VON F URSTENBERG
    designer
arrived: 1970
    I was twenty-two years old and had just gotten married to Prince Egon von Furstenberg. I was pregnant and carrying a big suitcase of stencils I was hoping to sell in America. I decided that instead of flying, I wanted to come very slowly in order to think about my future. So I took a boat. I arrived in October, so it was New York at its best—that beautiful blue crisp. Coming from Europe, I had expected the city would look modern, and actually, it didn’t. I was a young princess, so I lived on Park Avenue and had some small children and blah blah blah. But we were a young couple,