Opening Reception

Friday, November 15th

6 PM – 8 PM

City Lore Gallery

56 E 1st Street, New York, NY 10003

Exhibit runs from November 15, 2024 – December 8th, 2024

In this exhibit, painter Naima Rauam fondly remembers familiar places in lower Manhattan which once helped define the character of their neighborhoods. Some are gone, some are changed. The old Fulton Fish Market at the South Street Seaport, the Lower East Side, Little Italy, Chinatown are depicted in colors as vivid as her memories.  

Naima echos the sentiments of Kenneth Dunshee in his Forward to As You Pass By (Hastings House, 1952): “The absence of these historical treasures has imbued the author with the desire to recreate, at least in part, the living spirit of which there is so little material evidence and to bring to light the scenes of the past. It is not so much our city’s relics that we revere as it is the inspiration of their association.”

“When I walk through a neighborhood, I want to experience its roots and its past lives, if only in my imagination and my artwork.” – Naima Rauam

About the artist:

Naima Rauam is an artist who has followed her passion for place throughout her career. She came to New York City at the age of 18 to study at the Art Students League. As the result of a class assignment, she fell in love with the “electric energy” of the Fulton Fish Market and devoted decades to documenting it in her art. She has painted in various fish houses over the years, and for a time lived in the smokehouse on Beekman Street, where she “slept on the floor between my bicycle and computer, and my easel and art supplies. Outside I could hear the guys during the night yelling and doing their fish thing. To me it was a lullaby.” Later she moved her studio into the market’s fabled Tin Building until 2005 when the Fulton Fish Market moved from lower Manhattan to Hunts Point in the Bronx. Naima currently lives and works in her studio in lower Manhattan, where she is inspired to paint places she feels have helped define the character and spirit of the diverse neighborhoods that make downtown such an interesting part of New York City. She was the recipient of City Lore’s People’s Hall of Fame Award in 2018.