Cards for the Holidays

The earliest holiday card on view features an installation photograph from Four Sculptors: Arp, César, Mallary, Mirko, an exhibition that was held from October 10 – 24, 1960 at Pace’s very first location on Newbury Street in Boston, while the most recent card was produced this year in memory of Thomas Nozkowski. Each year a few thousand cards are produced, and 3-5 copies are preserved for the archive.

Pace’s first colorized exhibition announcement, pictured above, is also on view. Produced for Stock Up for the Holidays: An Anthology of Pop Art, a group exhibition held from December 10 – January 2, 1963, it provided Bostonians with their first real taste of pop art. The exhibition included works by Claes Oldenburg, Marisol, Robert Indiana, Andy Warhol, George Segal, Tom Wesselmann, and Jim Dine, which were lent by the artists themselves or other galleries. The announcement for the show, an image of a Santa Claus drinking a bottle of Coke and waving at a small helicopter, is a borrowed image. A few weeks before the opening the exhibition, Arne and Milly Glimcher noticed a poster in the window of their local Stop & Shop. Deciding the advertisement would be perfect for the gallery’s upcoming show, they secured 500 copies from future Pace Editions President Dick Solomon, who was training as a butcher at the family business. The artists’ names were printed around the border of the poster, inviting collectors to stock up on art for the holiday.

The holiday cards in this show were transferred from Pace’s Graphics department to Pace’s archive during the summer of 2019. The Stock Up for the Holidays announcement was generously transferred to the Research & Archives department by Milly Glimcher around 2008.