On 2 February 1930, Grand Central Art Galleries opened Thirty-three Moderns, a show of contemporary work drawn from 33 artists associated with the avant-garde Downtown Gallery. The fetched Grand Central Art Galleries source records more than 130 works, including Morris Kantor's Woman Reading in Bed, Walt Kuhn's Beryl, Samuel Halpert's Girl in a Bathing Suit, Marguerite Zorach's Sixth Avenue, and works by Yasuo Kuniyoshi. The account also preserves Edward Alden Jewell's New York Times response, which emphasized the theatrical collision between the conservative prestige of Grand Central and the 'radicals' of Downtown modernism, as well as sales and collector attention on opening day. The exhibition is notable as a market and visibility event: it brought downtown modernists into one of New York's largest and most establishment-oriented art-sales spaces.
The show marked a public rapprochement between New York's avant-garde artists and a more mainstream commercial gallery audience.
