Prudence Peiffer’s The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever (HarperCollins, 2023) examines the brief moment, from 1956 to 1967, when a collection of dilapidated former sail-making warehouses along the bottom edge of Manhattan island known as Coenties Slip became the quiet center of the art world. The community created by Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, James Rosenquist, Robert Indiana, Jack Youngerman, Delphine Seyrig, and Lenore Tawney became an antidote to the macho AbEx shadow that had the art world in thrall; Coenties Slip was a place where men and women shared equal artistic billing, and where a community of predominantly gay artists felt safe to work, live, and to consequently make some of the most critically important works of postwar American art.
Prudence Peiffer is an art historian, writer, and editor. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, Bookforum, the New York Times, the New York Review of Books online, and Print magazine, among others. She is currently the managing editor of the Creative Team at the Museum of Modern Art. Previously, she was the digital content director at David Zwirner Gallery and a senior editor at Artforum. She received a postdoctoral fellowship from Columbia University, an MA and PhD from Harvard University, and a BA from Yale University.