Our #getbusted campaign for Magda Sawon sure has paid off. In April, Art F City nominated Postmasters gallery founder Magda Sawon as our top pick for sculptural immortalization in the High Line’s #getbusted contest. We’d like to honor Sawon, over any other figure, with a sculpture made in her likeness. With this week’s announcement of the contest finalists, we found out she’s made the cut!
Postmistress Magda Sawon joins a stellar cast of four other finalists: author Dorothy Parker, firefighter Daniel Reddan, queer artist and activist Florent Morellet, and High Line proponent Peter Obletz. Those candidates are all talented in their own right, but we can’t think of a more fitting exemplar of Chelsea—and its bittersweet relationship to art—than Sawon. From our original call:
For 28 years, Magda Sawon’s indomitable spirit has coursed through Postmasters. The gallery began humbly, in the East Village, and then found subsequent homes in SoHo, and Chelsea. By the end of May, Postmasters will need to move yet again. Sawon cites her 19th street gallery’s $30,000 a month rent increase as enough of a reason to move to the Lower East Side.
We nominate Magda Sawon as a monument to what Chelsea had been, and what it could be. She is one of many who have left their mark, but have been squeezed out.
Round two of voting has begun. You have just a week to cast your ballot, so vote now. Then vote again and again—you can do this every day, once a day. Let’s preserve the cultural legacies of those who matter.
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