Clive Davis Gallery

The Clive Davis Gallery serves as a retrospective of Mr. Davis's monumental career.

PERMANENT EXHIBITION

The permanent exhibition on the lower level of the Gallery celebrates Mr. Davis and the story of this Brooklyn native's many decades-long transformative work nurturing and shaping the careers of some of the most iconic artists in the pop, rock, r&b, jazz and hip hop genres. 

Upper Gallery 

The upper gallery hosts temporary exhibitions of contemporary art and design across media and at the nexus of art and technology, including the work of NYU faculty, students, and community partners. The gallery aspires to reflect the creative community within and around 370 Jay Street and to engage critically with contemporary ideas and debates.

Poetics of the Photographic: Language of Resistance

November 9, 2025 – January 28, 2026  (Closed 12/19 – 01/22) 
Curated by: Rose DeSiano, Dept. of Photography & Imaging, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU
Reception:  January 24, 2026 5:30pm - 7:30pm 

Poetics of the Photographic: Language of Resistance an exhibition brings together artists who expand photography beyond its material limits, using its grammar of light, index, and trace to examine how photography functions as a methodology of investigation and interrogation—a means through which histories are not only recorded but contested. The works gathered here are photograph-adjacent: sculpture, poetry, drawing, and performance inhabit the conceptual terrain of photography without adhering strictly to its material conventions. 

Through poetry and meticulous drawings of discarded negatives, Joel Daniel Phillips and Quraysh Ali Lansana confront the problematized gaps within photographic representation. Rose DeSiano’s luminous photographic fabric sculpture hosts AI-generated photo-hallucinations from data mining. Both interrogate image systems and the politics of representation.

Two collaboratives transform artifice and staged photography into acts of resistance. Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber use constructed photography to celebrate beauty amid apocalyptic futures—their large scale and sublime qualities reclaim power in representation. In a large group collaboration, Samantha Nye, Annie M. Sprinkle, Beth Stephens, and Vanessa K. Rees use film stills and performance to confront queer representation of intimacy and the devastating failure of society to support women’s healthcare.

With a quiet reverence for the photograph as both relic and revelation, Lorie Novak, Deb Willis, and Hank Willis Thomas explore the porous terrain of memory, time, and perception, constructing visual dialogues that reconsider what it means to look, to challenge, and to inherit a visual past. Together, these artists transform the act of photography into a political gesture—an ethics of attention that creates space for both rupture and repair. 

Press Contact: Jasmine E. Scriven < j.Scriven@nyu.edu>  Department of Photography & Imaging

 Tisch School of the Arts, New York University   | 212-998-1930

INAUGURAL EXHIBITION

The inaugural exhibition at the Clive Davis Gallery tells the story of the development of the contemporary music recording industry through the career of Clive Davis. Woven through the exhibit is a timeline that presents the changing creativity, marketing and distribution.

Davis's career surged as the recording industry changed, and he helped shape its evolution. His early years at Columbia Records saw the advent of rock music which he enthusiastically promoted. In the mid-1970s, when Davis formed Arista Records, he saw the need to branch out into many different musical genres, and by the 1980s to take advantage of a new medium to promote music -- MTV. Later, with J Records and Sony, he succeeded in finding and marketing new talent and he embraced new forms of music, against the ever changing landscape of technology and the user experience. 

NYU and Tisch School of the Arts extend deep and profound gratitude to Clive Davis for his vision that launched the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music in 2003 and established a world-class, state-of-the-art permanent home for the Institute. Mr. Davis is an NYU alumnus and Honorary Degree recipient and a member of the Tisch's Dean's Council.

Location

The Clive Davis Gallery
370 Jay Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201

Hours

Closed NOV 27, 28 AND  Dec 19 - Jan 21

Monday -       Closed

Tuesday         11am - 6pm

Wednesday    11am - 2pm

Thursday       11am - 6pm

Friday            11am - 6pm

Saturday        11am -6pm

Sunday.          Closed

Admission to the gallery is free. Pre-registration for tickets is not necessary. 

For questions and more information, please contact clivedavisgallery@nyu.edu.