Colin de Land and Pat Hearn Library Collection

The Colin de Land and Pat Hearn Library Collection is comprised of the libraries for Pat Hearn Gallery and American Fine Arts, Co., and the personal library of the gallerists Pat Hearn and Colin de Land. Pat Hearn Gallery opened in 1983 at its first location at 94 Avenue B in the East Village of Manhattan. In 1985, the gallery expanded to another East Village location, at 735 East Ninth Street. In 1988 Hearn moved the gallery again to Soho, at 39 Wooster Street. In 1995, the gallery relocated to the its final location at 530 West 22nd Street in Chelsea, where it remained until its closing in 2002. Over its nineteen years of existence, Pat Hearn Gallery’s program featured a diverse selection of artists working in a variety of mediums, including painting, performance, photography, conceptual art, and video. Pat Hearn Gallery artists included Philip Taaffe, Milan Kunc, Peter Schuyff, Jimmy de Sana, Jutta Koether, Monique Prieto, Julia Scher, Susan Hiller, Renee Green, Simon Leung, George Condo, Jack Pierson and Mark Morrisroe, Joan Jonas, and Lutz Bacher, and others.

Colin de Land’s gallery, American Fine Arts Co. was founded in 1982 as a storefront space on Clinton and Stanton streets in the East Village, operating under the name American Fine Art, which soon changed to Vox Populi. In 1986, Vox Populi moved to 511 East Sixth Street and changed names to American Fine Arts, Co., Colin de Land Fine Art (A.F.A). In 1988, A.F.A relocated to 40 Wooster Street in Soho. In 1993, the gallery moved down the street to a larger location at 22 Wooster Street. In 2000, following Pat Hearn’s death, Colin de Land took over activities at Hearn’s gallery at 530 West 22nd Street as American Fine Arts, Co.—Colin de Land Fine Art at PHAG, Inc. For a period of around two years de Land dually operated this location and his gallery at 20 Wooster Street. In 2002, de Land ceased activities at the Wooster Street location and operated solely out of Chelsea. After de Land’s death in 2003, exhibitions organized by de Land’s contemporaries continued at this location until November 2004. A.F.A. was notable in its subversion of the conventional commercial gallery model. Recurring artists in the A.F.A. program included Cady Noland, Mark Dion, Peter Fend, Andrea Fraser, John Waters, Jessica Stockholder, Christian Philipp Müller, Tom Burr, John Knight, and Silvia Kolbowski, among others. Pat Hearn and Colin de Land were both born in 1955. The pair began a relationship in the mid-1980s, and married in 1999. In 1994, Hearn and de Land helped to establish the Gramercy International Art Fair, which was renamed in 1999 as The Armory Show. Hearn passed away in 2000 after a battle with liver cancer. Colin de Land also lost his life to cancer in 2003.

After A.F.A.’s closing in 2004, the books and printed material in the The Colin de Land and Pat Hearn Library Collection were managed by Daniel McDonald and Christine Tsvetanov, former A.F.A. directors and managers of the estate. In 2006, the collection was purchased by Alexander Schröder, the Berlin-based art collector and co-founder of Galerie Neu. The collection was further organized at this point for exhibition at several European locations. In 2008, a portion of the collection was exhibited at Mehringdamm 72 Galerie in Berlin during the exhibition “Colin de Land: American Fine Arts.” Also in 2008, parts of the collection were shown in the exhibition “Some Neighbors” at Kunstverein München. Items from the Library were displayed in the exhibition “Berlin–Paris” at the private apartment of Daniele Balice and Alexander Hertling in Paris in 2010. In 2011, the collection played a prominent role in the staging of “Dealing with—Some Books, Visuals and Works Related to American Fine Arts, Co.” at Halle Für Kunst and Kunstraum at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany. In 2014, the Library was exhibited at Artists Space Books and Talks in New York, NY, as part of the exhibition “The Library Vaccine.”

In 2014, the Library and Archives at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College acquired the collection from Alexander Schröder. To reflect the significant input and involvement of Pat Hearn and Pat Hearn Gallery in the development of the Library, the name of the collection was changed from “The Colin de Land Library” to “The Colin de Land and Pat Hearn Library Collection.”