Exhibition preview·New York
The Chelsea Hotel's forgotten artists step out of the shadows
Decades after the Hotel Chelsea's famous residents made it a legend, the lesser-known artists who lived there — Bettina, Ching Ho Cheng, Bernard Childs, Herbert Gentry, Nicola L. and Teruko Yokoi — are finally getting museum shows, retrospectives and gallery representation, often thanks to the relatives and friends who kept their work safe.
New York's Hotel Chelsea has been famous since it opened as a haven for artists, musicians and bohemians. Now the spotlight is turning to residents whose names never made the legend: Bettina, Ching Ho Cheng, Bernard Childs, Herbert Gentry, Nicola L. and Teruko Yokoi, late artists whose work is finding new audiences as estates, dealers and museums revisit it.
Bernard Childs, who moved in with his wife in 1966, was given a solo stand at September's Armory Show by the gallery Bank, with 1970s canvases priced between $14,000 and $55,000. Childs showed at Documenta in 1959 and had a Stedelijk Museum solo the same year, but his previous dealer last showed him in person in 2013 and closed in 2024. Ching Ho Cheng, who moved in during 1976, made psychedelic paintings, airbrushed gouaches and rusted metal surfaces; he will receive his first major retrospective in September 2027 at the Addison Gallery of American Art. Herbert Gentry, who arrived in the late 1960s, painted jazz-inspired abstractions; by December he will have work in museum group shows in Alabama, Germany and Martinique, plus a solo show in Sweden.
The recoveries have often depended on the people closest to the artists. When the reclusive Bettina died in 2021, hotel management began clearing her apartment until the artist Yto Barrada intervened to save its contents; a solo show at the Ruth Foundation for the Arts in Milwaukee closed in April. Nicola L., known for her anthropomorphic functional sculptures, was largely overlooked until Tate Modern included her in The World Goes Pop in 2015; a MuHKA retrospective closed earlier this month. She also led the residents' successful fight to keep their rent-stabilised apartments during an 11-year renovation that turned the building into a high-end hotel.
Teruko Yokoi, who lived at the Chelsea from 1957 to 1960 during her marriage to Sam Francis, has a namesake Japanese restaurant in the hotel basement. Her solo show Seasons runs at Hollis Taggart in New York until 25 November, and the gallery will take one of her Chelsea-era works to the ADAA Fair from 12 to 16 November.
