Douglas Heller talks about working more with European artists after seeing the Corning ‘79 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Oral history interview with Doug Heller by Barb Elam and Jesse Merandy, September 27, 2018, Heller Gallery. Clip length: 01:36.

Doug Heller: So we looked down in SoHo, and we found wonderful classic cast-iron space on Green Street, that was a photographer’s flea market. And we met a very interesting landlord who was open to something new because we still were something odd and didn’t have the type of credentials he was used to. And he was Peter Max’s uncle, and he liked the idea of something quirky; and we were definitely quirky, you know. So we took this space and that changed things considerably, this was suddenly from these small boutique spaces of 900 to maybe 1200 feet. We were in 3000 square feet with a 2700 square foot downstairs, half of which was finished, and we were holding different types of exhibitions. The work changed dramatically and also the range of artists that we represented changed. We started to work more with the Europeans after being exposed to this great landmark show from the Metropolitan Museum of Art called New Glass: A Worldwide Survey 1979, and I believe there were glassmakers from 60 different countries there. I went up to the opening of that show and truly had an epiphany after seeing the work that I didn’t know existed, you know, a level of sophistication, a level of scale. And I drove back from up state just transfixed with what we could do next.