Lenore Tawney’s ‘Dark River’
Prudence Peiffer, MoMA Magazine
February 2025
The East River flows through ‘The Artists of Coenties Slip’. This collection exhibition, currently on view at MoMA, looks at a brief period when a group of artists lived and worked on Coenties Slip, far downtown by the waterfront in Manhattan. One of the 12 original slips dug out of the eastern shore in the 17th century for ships and canal boats bringing supplies in and out of the city, Coenties Slip was once part waterway and part street. By the time the artists arrived in the 1950s, the slip was filled in (too many drunk people falling in at night), and the huge prows of ships looming over the street were long gone. But the East River still ran past the commercial maritime lofts of the artists, who hung binoculars on nails next to their windows to watch as barges and tugboats slid past, a reminder of the industry and itinerant nature of this place. Much of the work of the artists of Coenties Slip reflects the river’s close presence and its eddying tide of history. […]