"Born of voluntary initiatives in the 1970s, alternative spaces in New York claiming the aesthetics of the slums, a legacy of insecurity, as opposed to the world of established art dealer. Since these sites avant-garde art tend to disappear or to integrate the institutional structures.
By the late 1960s, the first alternative spaces in New York appear in SoHo, a district of Manhattan. In the early 1960s, when artists began to settle illegally in abandoned lofts of some factories, there is no guess that the South Houston District can become the heart avant-garde art in New York. While the first artists to make their homes, factories and wholesale stores and retail have already given up most of the buildings of the small neighborhood. The future of SoHo is directly threatened by extensive urban redevelopment programs for the entire south of the island. "
