Westwood Gallery NYC: 30 Years

A milestone exhibition to celebrate its 30^th anniversary, Westwood Gallery NYC: 30 Years, curated by James Cavello, will feature 80 works of art selected from the gallery’s expansive history of over 180 exhibitions and 800 artists. The public exhibition will be on view from September 6 through October 25, 2025, with an opening reception on Saturday, September 6th, from 5 to 8pm. 

Founded in 1995 by James Cavello and Margarite Almeida, Westwood Gallery began its journey in SoHo’s historic Broadway arts corridor and is currently located in the Bowery Arts District, a moniker coined by the gallery to celebrate the history of artist pioneers, galleries, and museums on the Bowery. The gallery program has a reputation for championing historically overlooked artists, advancing scholarship, and serving as a bridge between art, community, collections, and education.

Since its inaugural exhibition of overlooked Bauhaus artists of the 1920s, many of the gallery’s exhibitions have worked to restore visibility to underrepresented figures in art history. This included: Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980), revolutionary Art Deco cubist artist; Leo Matiz (1917-1998), Colombian photographer of Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros; John Thomson (1837-1921), Scottish photographer who captured 19^th century images of the people of China and the Far East; László Paizs (1935-2009), Hungarian artist whose work was influenced by WWII and the Hungarian Revolution; Boris Lurie (1924-2008), Holocaust survivor who went on to co-found the NoArt! Movement in NYC in the 1950s; Lucien Clergue (1934-2014), photographer of Picasso and Jean Cocteau’s 1960 film Testament of Orpheus; and the celebrated Pop artist Andy Warhol (1928-1987), who, along with Victor ‘Hugo’ Rojas (1948-1994), was the subject of an 18-year research project culminating in a revelatory exhibition of 13 mannequin sculptures, created c. 1979-80.

Over the years, the gallery has mounted collaborative exhibitions such as the Gottlieb Collection (Red Grooms, Marisol, Dick Bellamy, Wolf Kahn, Helen Frankenthaler, and many others); the Japan Art Alliance, a collective of contemporary Japanese Artists; the Henry Buhl Collection, a curation of 120 photographs of hands, including Dawoud Bey, Mary Ellen Mark, Edward Weston, Robert Mapplethorpe, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Julia Margaret Cameron, Bill Beckley and many others; Pacific to Atlantic, thirteen contemporary artists of Hawai’i; and the gallery’s annual series entitled Artists on the Bowery, which celebrates historic Bowery artists including Arman, Louise Nevelson, Jake Berthot, Martha Diamond, David Diao, Carmen Cicero, Brenda Goodman, Harmony Hammond, Medrie MacPhee, Dorothea Rockburne, Joanne Greenbaum, Harvey Quaytman, Jack Tworkov, Mary Ann Unger, and Carrie Yamaoka.

Within the gallery’s current roster are living artists whose lifelong practices engage deeply with social, cultural and geographic themes: Danny Simmons, founder of Neo-African Abstract Expressionism; Inger Johanne Grytting, important artist in the meditative Mark-Making movement; Don Porcaro, stratigraphic marble and stone sculptor; and Nobuho Nagasawa, an interdisciplinary artist whose Covid-era installation in the gallery invited communal mourning and reflection through sound, ritual and symbolism. 

Beyond exhibitions, the gallery’s Founders have remained a driving force for social impact—supporting senior artists, serving on nonprofit boards, advocating for children’s education and health, and producing River of Gold (2018), a documentary film on the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. James Cavello, a longtime civic leader, is currently the first gallerist elected President of a New York City Business Improvement District (BID), the SoHo Broadway Initiative. Cavello’s community engagement began at the outset of his arts career when he was elected President of a grass-roots artist council based in Brooklyn, NY.

Other gallery projects include collaborating with global governments, corporations, and technology partners to develop and invest in impactful exhibitions and environments that offer cultural context and engage the public. This work has included major projects such as the creation of the largest glass sculpture in Asia in 1998 permanently installed in Lincoln House in Hong Kong; curating a large-scale exhibition for the Egyptian government during the United Nations General Assembly; curating an exhibition for Chanel, Inc. that traveled to Honolulu, Hong Kong and Tokyo; and developing a large-scale permanent public art project planned for New York City in 2026. For museum loans, acquisitions, and collaborations, the gallery has partnered with institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Qatar Museums; The Menil Collection, Houston; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Smithsonian Museum, Washington DC; Reginald F. Lewis Museum, Baltimore; Houston Museum of African American Culture; National Portrait Gallery, London; Musées de Marseille, France; and many other museums in the U.S. and across the globe.      

This 30-year anniversary exhibition is not just a milestone in the gallery history, but a moment to honor the artists who have empowered and worked with Westwood Gallery NYC to share their stories. It is an opportunity to reaffirm the gallery’s commitment to thoughtful and deeply engaged curation and to continue to shape how art history is written and remembered.

“Our journey is rooted in a deep passion for art history and rediscovering voices that deserve to be heard.”
- Margarite Almeida, co-founder and executive director.

“We’ve spent three decades building a curatorial program grounded in scholarship and fearless exploration. This exhibition is a tribute to the artists who have entrusted us with their legacies.”

- James Cavello, co-founder and curator.

The legacy artists who are represented by the gallery that expand toward preservation of the artist’s artwork archive include:

Will Insley (1929-2011), visionary abstract architectural artist with previous solo exhibitions at MoMA, Guggenheim, and in the collection of over 20 museums;

Charles Hinman (1932-), leading founder of the shaped canvas movement of the 1960s and represented in the collection of MoMA, Whitney Museum, Smithsonian, and private collections;

James Juthstrom (1925-2007), a reclusive SoHo artist whose career was rediscovered and reignited by the gallery;

Bob Adelman (1931-2016), renowned Civil Rights photographer whose 2008 solo exhibition at the gallery was attended by actress and activist Ruby Dee, who paid tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King with a public reading of his 1967 ‘Beyond Vietnam’ speech. He is also a photographer of intimate moments of New York City artists (Warhol, Lichtenstein, Indiana, Marisol, Rosenquist and others);

Lazhar Mansouri (1932-1985), photographer of Algerian families and communities from the 1950-70s who inadvertently created a historic archive;

Séraphin-Médéric Mieusement (1840-1905), whose photographs of monumental architecture in 19^th century France were vital to national preservation efforts. 

The 30^th Anniversary exhibition includes work by:

Artists:  Constantin Antonovici, Arman, Jake Berthot, Miriam Bloom, Carmen Cicero, Tamara de Lempicka, John Giorno, Igor Gorsky, Inger Johanne Grytting, James Hendricks, Francis Hines, Charles Hinman, Will Insley, James Juthstrom, Hideko Kudo, Gerald Laing, Gerhardt Liebmann, Boris Lurie, Medrie MacPhee, Jeffrey Maron, Kiyokatsu Matsumiya, Ron Morosan, Nobuho Nagasawa, Tetsugo Nakamura, Don Porcaro, Robert Ryman, H. A. Sigg, Steve Silver, Danny Simmons, Richard Smith, Alan Steele, Katsuyuki Suzuki, Stuart Sutcliffe, Yasushi Tanaka, Andy Warhol, Roger Welch

Photographers:  Bob Adelman, Hajira Ahmad, Joshua Charow, Lucien Clergue, Hatami, W.J. Kennedy, Douglas Kirkland, Man Ray, Jacques Lowe, Lazhar Mansouri, Leo Matiz, Séraphin-Médéric Mieusement, Margaret Morton, Princess Marianne Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, Neurdein Frères, Sam Shaw, Roy Schatt, John Thomson.