Margo Feiden

Background

Margo Feiden (Fī´- děn; b. 2 December 1944, Brooklyn, New York) is an art dealer (Margo Feiden Galleries Ltd., New York); a Broadway producer, director, and playwright (Guinness Book of World Records for youngest Broadway producer, director, and playwright); a paper restorer; appraiser; author; a founding member (the first female member) of the World Business Council of the United Nations under the auspices of the World Federation of United Nations Associations (WFUNA), an NGO;a licensed pilot; camel jockey; and member of Mensa since 1964.

For the past fifty years, Feiden has appeared on many television shows, including Johnny Carson's Who Do You Trust, in which "Three couples competed on each show, nearly always a man and a woman chosen for their unique backgrounds," The Joe Franklin Show, and Find!, with Leigh and Leslie Keno. She has appeared as a guest on many PBS pledge breaks. She also appears in the Oscar-nominated documentary film The Line King: The Al Hirschfeld Story. And she was also in the book and the film entitled Faces of New York by Peter Tunney and Antonio Guccione. They gave Margo Feiden the title “The Do-er.”

Career as a gallerist

Feiden is a gallerist specializing in American art of the 20th century. She has exhibited work by: Diane Arbus, Joel-Peter Witkin, Mildred Dienstag, Raphael Soyer, Ruth Gikow, Don Freeman, Kurt Vonnegut, Gloria Vanderbilt, Louis Lozowick, Isac Friedlander, and Gino Beghe. Her Gallery is noted for its collection of art of the WPA.

Feiden is perhaps best known for the exclusive representation of Al Hirschfeld (1903–2003) and his work, which began in 1969, is continuing after his death.

Feiden is known for bringing in the press. In November 1994, to celebrate a party for Al Hirschfeld at her then-Madison Avenue location, Feiden got New York city to close the street outside her gallery from 62nd to 63rd street at about 4 am so that she could have craftsmen reproduce a Hirschfeld self-portrait on the asphalt forty feet long, with Hirschfeld’s finger pointing to the entrance of her gallery. The New York Times ran an aerial view of this portrait, the title of which was “A Portrait of the Artist on a City Street." The New York Post wrote, “Talk about street art. The biggest piece in the retrospective of ninety-one–year-old Al Hirschfeld’s art work is 40 feet long and covers three lanes of Madison Avenue. The drawing, designed by Hirschfeld, was traced onto Madison Avenue with paint early yesterday. It points to the Margo Feiden Galleries Ltd., where rarely seen Hirschfeld works are on display.”

When Feiden negotiated with the United States Postal Service for Hirschfeld to do a series of postage stamps for them, Hirschfeld became the first person to have his name included on the booklet cover. “Hirschfeld will become the first living artist, really the first living person of any profession, to have his name on a US stamp booklet cover.”

When Hirschfeld United States postage stamps were issued, Feiden turned her gallery into a post office. When people thronged to the festivities, letters that they mailed from her gallery were stamped by United States Postal Service officials “First day of issue, Margo Feiden Galleries Ltd.”

Feiden also became a post office for the United Nations when on April 29, 1994 the United Nations had its first day of issue ceremony at her gallery. {United Nations Postal Administration Press Release, “UN Postal Administration to Hold First Day Ceremonies at New York Art Gallery,” April? 1994}

Paper restorer

As a restorer, Feiden has worked on documents and works of art on paper since the early 1970s. The well-known New York Daily News reporter Sidney Fields wrote in a profile about Feiden in 1971, in an article entitled “A Pilot’s Gallery,” “…she restores decaying old and rare documents and precious works of art. They’re all on paper of one kind or another, nothing on canvas and nothing made of wood, clay, metal or glass. She works on etchings, lithographs, watercolors, woodcuts, prints, rare books, letters, marriage licenses, diplomas, baptismal papers. After restoring them, Margo frames them. She designs and makes all her own frames, right down to the special carving on them.”

DuPont Magazine included a discussion of Feiden’s meticulous work as a paper restorer and framer in their company magazine’s 1974 article entitled, “Framed For Good Reasons”: “Restoration is slow and tedious. After careful study and testing, [Margo Feiden] removes all adhesives and deacidifies the paper. [She] mends tears by reweaving paper fibers, and filling in the holes with a mixture of mulberry tissue and wheat paste.”

Producer, director, and playwright

When she was 16 years old, Margo Feiden (as Margo Eden) produced and directed Peter Pan on Broadway, becoming Broadway’s youngest producer and director, a record she still holds The following year, she penned the play, “Out, Brief Candle,” becoming Broadway’s youngest playwright.

Feiden is a member of SAG/AFTRA.

Author

In addition to authoring plays, Feiden wrote Margo Feiden’s The Calorie Factor (Simon & Schuster, Fireside Imprint). “The 675-page paperback edition of Margo Feiden’s The Calorie Factor weighs nearly five pounds and contains 44 chapters of calorie charts. The Feiden philosophy is simple, determine the calorie content of each of the choices available to you and understand how important even small differences are in long-range weight control. Then you can decide which foods are worth their calorie cost, Feiden decreed from her New York gallery… it is the best sensible diet plan, one that works simply by numbers. Numbers that will eventually disappear on your bathroom scale.”

Kuda Bux

As a fourteen-year-old, Feiden met the Pakistani mystic/performer Kuda Bux while on a summer vacation with her family in Connecticut. In Kuda Bux’s performances, he read perfectly well with his eyes fully covered and his head wrapped in all manner of bandages, gauze pads, and even wet dough applied to his closed eyes. After seeing the performance, Feiden went backstage to meet the mystic and told him that when she was old enough, she wanted to become his agent. And just a few years later, she did become his agent as well as his producer, director, and publicist. Kuda Bux and Feiden would appear on stage together, with Feiden answering questions while Kuda Bux did his demonstration. They appeared on television together.

Career As A Gallerist

After seeing Kuda Bux and Feiden on television, photographer Diane Arbus called Feiden to say that she wanted to photograph Kuda Bux. At that time Arbus was being exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

The women became fast friends. Feiden, a licensed pilot, would take Arbus flying so that the photographer could take pictures of Manhattan from the air. One day in 1969, heading to Arbus’s apartment/studio, Feiden saw a For Rent sign and signed a lease one hour later. That same day, after a flight together, Arbus invited Feiden to hang Arbus’ own work on the walls of Feiden’s new gallery. Thus Feiden’s gallery had its first exhibition.

In addition to exhibiting the photographs of Diane Arbus, Feiden also exhibited the photographs of the Joel-Peter Witkin. In fact, the now-storied photograph of Feiden as a pilot standing in front of an old single engine plane was taken by photographer Witkin.

Feiden had the Witkin photograph of her the gallery’s bookcase one day the artist Al Hirschfeld walked into her gallery to see the current exhibition, a retrospective of the prints of Raphael Soyer. Hirschfeld noticed the Witkin photograph and told Feiden “Any woman who can fly an airplane can sell my art.” This led to the thirty-year plus business relationship with Feiden as his exclusive art dealer, the representation continued after his death. Hirschfeld created a portrait of Feiden to be used as the gallery’s logo. The drawing shows Feiden in her original 10th Street gallery with a portrait of Hirschfeld and Hirschfeld’s wife Dolly Haas on a wall behind Feiden. The drawing also depicts Hirschfeld’s portraits of Jane Fonda and Peter Ustinov off to the side.

To celebrate the tenth anniversary of their relationship, Hirschfeld created a portrait of Feiden exactly as she was in the Witkin photograph that had brought them together.

References

• Guinness Book of World Records, Publishers: Bantam Books, New York, 1983
• AlHirschfeld.com
• O'Brien, Glenn, Interview Magazine, March 24, 2009
• New York Times
• Daily News
• Genii Forum
• Boswell, Patricia, Diane Arbus: A Biography, 1984, Random House Inc., New York