717 Fifth Avenue is a prestigious address in the Midtown East neighborhood of Manhattan, at the cross street of East 56th Street.
Known as The Corning Glass Building/Steuben Glass Building, 717 Fifth was designed by Harrison & Abramovitz, who also designed Lincoln Center and the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld Library Building. A highly innovative approach for its time, 717 was the first glass curtain wall skyscraper on Fifth Avenue.
In 1959, a gold-leaf mural by Bauhaus artist Josef Albers, Two Structural Constellations, was engraved in the lobby of the building. Between 1993 and 1994, the firm Gwathmey Siegel Architects renovated the dramatic two-story lobby and common areas.
Art Assets has been curating exhibitions at 717 since 1994. The first 10 exhibits were based on Albers, his materials, designs, contemporaries, his students, and his students as teachers. Recent exhibitions have included Andy Warhol’s Private Polaroid Collection, in collaboration with Christie’s, and now painter David Row, in collaboration with Loretta Howard Gallery.
David Row was born in 1949 in Portland, Maine. He studied at Yale University from 1968-1974, where he studied under Al Held, who would become a lifelong friend and mentor. Immediately following his studies, Row moved to New York City, where he continues to live and work.
One-person museum shows include Ennead, originating at the Edwin A. Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas (2000), and travelling to The McKinney Avenue Contemporary in Dallas, Texas (2001). His works are in the permanent collections of museums worldwide, including The Brooklyn Museum, The Carnegie Museum of Art, The Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant in Painting (1987). He received the Isaac N. Maynard Prize for Painting from the National Academy Museum, New York, in May 2008.
David Row is represented by Loretta Howard Gallery in New York.