Name Helen Gee | ||
Books Limelight: A Greenwich Village Photography Gallery and Coffeehouse in the Fiftees : a Memoir | ||
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Helen Gee (1919–2004) was an American art gallery owner, co-owner of the Limelight gallery in New York City.
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She was born as Helen Charlotte Wimmer in Jersey City, New Jersey, and went to New York when she was sixteen to live with renowned modernist painter, Yun Gee. They were married in 1942. They had a daughter, artist Li-lan, in 1943 and were subsequently divorced in 1947. She later married Kevin Sullivan, but that ended in divorce. Gee taught herself transparency retouching for a living. In the 1950s, she came across a photography show at the Museum of Modern Art, which inspired her interest in photography.
In 1954 she opened New York's first important post-war photography gallery along with her sister and brother in-law, the Limelight, on Seventh Avenue South and Barrow Street. Although the gallery closed in 1961 due to financial pressure, it had pioneered sales of photographs as art.
In the late 1970s Gee worked as a photography curator, lecturer and writer.
In 1997 she published her memoir of her time with the Limelight, itself titled Limelight: A Memoir.
Gee's gallery was inside a coffee shop, and the Village Voice's first Obie Awards ceremony was held at her café.