My name is Bruno Testore Schmidt and I was one of the people who’d been there from the very first day.
I lived around the corner.
We used to meet all the friends there all the time and do everything that we did.
1979 or something?
Yeah, '79 or '78.
We’d go to SVA and I used to go right around the corner and go there to visit.
Hey, Fred.
Hello!
Good to see you.
It was the one place on Earth that was like that at that moment.
My name is Ellen Berkenblit and I had my first painting show at Club 57 in 1983.
Wait, Duncan, you want to fill in a little bit?
What happened at Club 57?
Mayhem.
Play-acting.
"The Jetsons," that happened.
We happened.
Club 57 was a little kind of bubble of lunacy in kind of a dark time, right?
It was a dark time then.
A lot of death, heroine, etc.
But at Club 57 it was all "you can be whoever you want to be," don't you think?
It was Halloween every night.
Yeah.
There was a time none of us went above 14th Street, and now we're at fuckin' MoMA.
I know, I know.
You know, Club 57 was definitely unique in that it was like the art crowd.
Like, the Mudd Club was like the music crowd, you know, and a little older.
So every club had their, like, thing, but Club 57...
Club 57 was a little goofy.
Stanley was the Polish guy at the church who hooked up Club 57 to be a youth group in a
basement of a Polish church and really advocate...and people go like, "But it's really degenerates,
really crazy."
And he'd be like, "Well, our youth are more troubled now.
We have to be more understanding."
There's a certain synergy that comes when you mix cultures.
Like, jazz, blues and rock 'n roll came out of Congo Square in New Orleans because that's
where cultures could mix.
Club 57 is where everybody could mix and there was no...you know what I mean, everybody came
from different backgrounds.
When you get 50 people together, if you create the right environment and allow then to be
super creative in improvisation, they can create unbelievable art.
My name is Fred Brathwaite.
People know me as Fab 5 Freddy, and I make paintings, I make culture, I disrupt, I shake
it up, and I exhibited at Club 57.
So this is a work that I made during that timeframe.
The other piece on the other side, "Kneecap Art Pimps" was a piece that actually showed
at Club 57.
It was fun.
It was a fun place.
Anything goes.
I was good friends with Keith Haring and that's how I got to get familiar with Club 57, and
then became friends with, you know, Kenny Scharf and Ann Magnuson and a bunch of the
core crew.
So I would be there often for different events.
My name is Shawn McQuate.
I was also known as AMMO.
And the first thing I did with Club 57 was I was a go-go dancer for the Ladies Auxiliary
slumber party.
I started doing fashion shows, and then I did happenings there and I did performances
of dance and music there.
And it was like you could just think up these things and do them there.
So this is the wire dress that I made for Kitty.
I wanted to use this cool wire, so I made this dress with it.
And then Kitty, who was just the best sport in the world for art, wore it.
Oh, here she is!
And Shawn made this dress for me two years ago.
I was just talking about you.
I know.
I saw that.
That wasn't planned.
Trust me.
I made this dress for her too.
I was just walking by.
That's amazing.
Yeah, so this is Kitty, the best sport in the world for art.
Yes, I was his muse.
And Shawn was wonderful enough to make this dress for me two years ago.
It's an original.
It's all lace and there's no sewing.
It's all paper fasteners and cleverness.
I am Animal X. Animal as in "growl" and X as in "marks the spot," and X, I use because
it's the best letter in the alphabet, you know.
I got into the Club 57 crowd...basically I predated it a little bit.
I was at the School of Visual Arts with Kenny, but I dropped out of it because I was too
busy partying.
In fact, I think Keith never forgave me the one time I was graffiti-ing in the SVA and
I was doing this text piece going all the way down the wall, all the way down the stair,
all the way down the wall, right over what he was graffiti-ing.
And I just kept writing and writing, and then I went upstairs and came all the way down
again.
So after that we weren't best buds.
But you don't think about those things.
You know, you're just like, "I'm doing what I'm doing.
You're doing what you're doing."
Well, you know, I went there but I don't remember because I was on Quaaludes probably, you know
what I mean.
But I was more of a Mudd Club guy, I got to admit, and I hated Studio 54.
I was the only person.
Well, no, other people hated it.
Disco sucked.
I fuckin' hated Studio 54, but I did love this place for their movies.
That's what I remember, their movie series.
It's like a high school reunion from hell or something.
My name is Barry Schills and this is a video that I made at Club 57 in around 1980, I think.
Yes, 1980. But this was Lady Wrestling Night at Club 57.
I was one of the fortunate people to have a video camera back then, and I shot a lot
of the events there.
The one downstairs is "The Lawrence Welk Show" where all the girls got dressed up and acted...
you know, every night it was something different there.
I love it.
It looks great, but I like garish colors.
So if anyone's listening, yank it up.
So Club 57... Ann and I met in 1977 in London.
We were students.
I was witness to their meeting.
Before I met you, I met Ann.
But that was a significant year, '77.
It was the beginning of punk.
New York was very depressed.
I was a New York kid.
I ended up coming back to New York.
Ann was already here.
She introduced me to the East Village scene, CBGB's and Club 57.
And she said, "Come and be in this show, 'New Wave Vaudeville.'"
And I joined the show.
I joined the circus, basically.
And I dropped out of Columbia.
I was going to Columbia.
Remember, we were in a film class together.
It was Michael Oblowitz.
Well, I made some films.
They're in the show, some films that he shot, that he art directed.
They're beautiful black and white footage from '79, that's part of the show.
It was a rock video that we never finished editing.
We finally edited it.
It took 35 years, but it was worth it.
I mean people drop names of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat but come on, Kenny Scharf
is a god, an art god.
Frank Holliday, and art god.
Scott Covert, Ann Magnuson, I mean the list goes on of incredibly interesting talent.
Hi, I'm Daniel Durning.
I created “Self Contained Housing.”
This piece is a coat made out of fiberglass insulation, thermal plastic, fiberglass window
screening with two-inch trim with venting.
It's a very warm coat and it was made in response to my dilemma of how do I heat the spaces
I was looking at, which were cavernous?
In Brooklyn, loft spaces were available but you couldn't afford to put up a wall if you
were a poor, broke artist, but you could get the space.
I almost fainted in it at Club 57.
So it's too hot and you should not drink while wearing this coat, okay, that's all I can tell you.
It was Pink Panther pink when I originally created it.
It looks like a meat coat now.
The devil knows his meat.
My friend, Peter, who played in a band called The Fleshtones were going to be opening this
club.
They were having a hard time finding places to play, and they heard about this church
basement.
So we go in and it really was like this uncanny experience because you could feel it in the
air that there was something electric about this room.
And fast forward, you know, Ann Magnuson was the next connection I had.
And she basically had this calendar, and she was looking to put people on the calendar,
and it just became these amazing…one night after the next.
I've been pouring through the catalogue and there are so many different stories that are
associated with all these different events.
Things are just being made up on the fly and then they would make these incredible shows
out of them.
“Wrestling Night.”
There's one in the book called "National Geographic."
I don't remember it.
I don't know what it was, but I'm sure there was some kind of an amazing party that night.
My name is Ann Magnuson and I was the second manager of Club 57 and I'm the guest curator
of the exhibit here at MoMA.
Well, I was in New York starting in early '78.
I came here to be an intern, a directing intern, at a theater uptown.
And I met Tom Scully and he told me about this "New Wave Vaudeville" show he wanted to do.
And I said, "Can I direct it?" and he said "Yes."
and he introduced me to Susan Hannaford, and our various scenes comingled and the vaudeville show happened.
And Stanley Strychacki saw it and invited Tom, first, to come to the club and he told
us all about this small Club 57 at 57 Saint Mark's Place, and then they offered me the
job of being the manager, Stanley, and the rest is history.
[music]