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29-418: The Obie Awards were initiated by critic Jerry Tallmer and Edwin (Ed) Fancher, publisher of The Village Voice, who handled the financing and business side of the project. They were first given in 1956 under the direction of Tallmer. Initially, only off-Broadway productions were eligible; in 1964, off-off-Broadway productions were made eligible. The first Obie Awards ceremony was held at Helen Gee 's cafe. With

58-612: A daughter, artist Li-lan in 1943, and were subsequently divorced in 1947 after Yun Gee's incarceration due to his mental illness. She later married Kevin Sullivan, but that ended in divorce. In the 1950s, she attended shows curated by Edward Steichen at the Museum of Modern Art , which inspired her interest in photography. After finding work as a photo restorer in the late 1940s, Gee taught herself specialist transparency retouching for commercial and advertising photographers and

87-774: A photography curator, lecturer and writer. Gee was born Helen Charlotte Wimmer on April 29, 1919 in Jersey City, New Jersey , to father Peter who had been trained as a church decorator before he migrated from Austro-Hungary. Gee's mother Marie (née Ludwig) died during her infancy, and her widower brought up Helen and her older siblings Ella and Henry alone. Rebelling against her father's new wife who had Nazi sympathies, at fifteen she moved to New York City to finish high school and enrol in WPA art classes through which she met, and moved in with, established modernist painter, Yun Gee (1906-1963). They married seven years later in 1942 and had

116-782: A photography teacher and lecturer at Parsons School of Design , and as a curator and writer. In 1979 she curated Steiglitz and the Photo Secession, a reconstruction of the Photo-Secession exhibition held March 5–22, 1902 at the National Arts Club , New York, for the New Jersey State Museum and the touring Photography of the Fifties: An American Perspective, for which she wrote the catalogue essay, for

145-517: A year. Her marriage to Sullivan ended in divorce around this time, but Gee continued to reside and work in Greenwich Village as an independent art agent and as a dealer for both United States and international clients in prints, sculpture, and paintings, and specialising in erotic Japanese Shunga prints.   From May 3–31, 1969 she made a trip to Kyoto , Japan. In 1969 she sponsored a Vietnamese foster child, Nguyen Thi My Le through

174-540: Is a $ 2,000 grant awarded to a theatre that nurture innovative new plays. Previous recipients include: Helen Gee (curator) Helen Gee (1919–2004) was an American photography gallery owner, co-owner of the Limelight in New York City, New York from 1954 to 1961. It was New York City's first important post-war photography gallery, pioneering sales of photographs as art. In the late 1970s, Gee worked as

203-632: Is awarded every year. The Village Voice also awards annual Obie grants to selected companies; in 2011, these grants were $ 2,000 each to Metropolitan Playhouse and Wakka Wakka Productions . There is also a Ross Wetzsteon Grant, named after its former theater editor, in the amount of $ 2,000 (in 2009; in 2011 the grant was $ 1,000), for a theatre that nurtures innovative new plays. The first awards in 1955-1956 for plays and musicals were given to Absalom (Lionel Abel) as Best New Play, Uncle Vanya , Best All-Around Production and The Threepenny Opera as Best Musical. Other awards for off-Broadway theatre are

232-652: Is now TriBeCa . It also permitted construction of the New York City Subway IRT Broadway ;– Seventh Avenue Line which opened in 1918. Extension of the avenue was under consideration for several years, and was approved by the New York City Board of Estimate in September 1911, when the first $ 3 million appropriation was made for the initial planning of the work. The extension had been urged by civic groups to meet

261-465: Is served by the 1 , ​ 2 , and ​ 3 trains for most of its length, with N , ​ Q , ​ R , and ​ W service between 42nd Street and Central Park South . The Seventh Avenue station also serves the B , ​ D ​, and E trains. North of the park, Powell Boulevard is served by the Harlem–148th Street on

290-512: The 3 train, and the 155th Street station on the B and ​ D trains. It is also served by numerous local MTA New York City Bus routes downtown, with uptown buses on 8th Avenue unless specified below: South of 14th Street Seventh Avenue is a major thoroughfare in the West Village . The now dismantled St. Vincent's Hospital was a main downtown hospital on Seventh Avenue and 11th Street. Running through

319-984: The New York Post , Mabel Scacheri of the New York World-Telegram and George Wright in The Village Voice . The latter publication held the first three Obie Awards ceremonies in the café. The café and gallery was a popular meeting place for commercial, press, freelance, magazine and street photographers of the era, not only the exhibitors, but also other big names of the period; Diane Arbus , Philippe Halsman , Cornell Capa , Weegee (whom Gee banned), Lew Parrella, Morris Jaffe, Jerry Danzig, David Heath , Suzy Harris, Lee Friedlander , Sid Kaplan, John Cohen, Morris Engel, Walt Silver, Harold Feinstein , Paul Seligman, Martin Dain, Leo Stashin, Norman Rothschild ,  and Victor Obsatz. During

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348-611: The Center for Creative Photography . In 1983, Gee was invited by Michael Spano, director of the Midtown Y Photography Gallery , onto its newly formed board of advisors made up of significant members of the photographic community, including Aaron Siskind , Arthur Leipzig , Larry Fink , and Jeffrey Hoone. Helen Gee died of pneumonia on October 10, 2004, in Manhattan, New York, N.Y. Gee's archive of her work and records pertaining to

377-481: The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 . The southern terminus of Seventh Avenue was Eleventh Street in Greenwich Village through the early part of the 20th century. It was extended southward, as Seventh Avenue South, to link up with Varick Street in 1914, and Varick was widened at the same time. Extension of the avenue allowed better vehicular connections between midtown Manhattan and the commercial district in what

406-615: The Foster Parents Plan Inc. , with whom she corresponded until 1972, the letters being translated by the organisation. She again visited Japan in 1975 as a guest of Tokyo Shimbun , a newspaper that sponsored the Yasuo Kuniyoshi exhibit, and she returned in 1986. She also visited China during April 5–26, 1976 touring with the US-China People's Friendship Association . In the late 1970s, Gee worked as

435-513: The Garment District (which stretches from 12th Avenue to 5th Avenue and 34th Street to 39th Street), it is referred to as Fashion Avenue due to its role as a center of the garment and fashion industry and the famed fashion designers who established New York as a world fashion capital. The first, temporary signs designating the section of Seventh Avenue as "Fashion Avenue" were dual-posted in 1972, with permanent signs added over

464-1054: The Lucille Lortel Awards , the Drama Desk Awards , the Drama League Award , and the Outer Critics Circle Awards . In September 2014, the American Theatre Wing joined the Village Voice as co-presenters, with the Wing having "overall responsibility for running" the Awards. In 2021, the Wing took over as sole presenter of the Obie Awards. Obie Grants are awarded each year to select theatre companies. Previous recipients include: Ross Wetzsteon Award

493-645: The Americas ", long-time New Yorkers continue to use the older name. The street has two northern termini; an upper level terminates at the western end of the Macombs Dam Bridge , traveling over the Harlem River , where Jerome Avenue commences in the Bronx . A lower level continues a bit further north and curves into the lower level of West 155th Street . Seventh Avenue was originally laid out in

522-716: The Limelight Gallery are located at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona . Seventh Avenue (Manhattan) Seventh Avenue —co-named Fashion Avenue in the Garment District and known as Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard north of Central Park —is a thoroughfare on the West Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It is southbound below

551-472: The Limelight Gallery in 1954, and in 1956 she traveled briefly to Spain and France with Li-lan after the two had won a television competition. In May 1954 Gee opened New York City's first important post-war photography gallery. With initial assistance of her sister Ella and brother in-law, she took a ten-year lease at a very low $ 225 a month on a building on Seventh Avenue South and Barrow Street. Limelight's 20 by 25 foot gallery space, its walls white and

580-402: The book provides contemporary insights—and gossip—about the society of Greenwich Village of the period, into the lives and personalities of a number of important photographers including Lisette Model and Robert Frank , notes the effect of McCarthyism on artists' output, and provides a balanced appraisal of Edward Steichen 's The Family of Man which launched at the Museum of Modern Art

609-495: The commercial needs of Greenwich Village. A significant number of old buildings were marked for demolition in the extension, and the demolished buildings included the Bedford Street Methodist Church, constructed in 1840. Most of Seventh Avenue has carried traffic one-way southbound since June 6, 1954. The portion north of Times Square carried two-way traffic until March 10, 1957. Seventh Avenue

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638-475: The exception of the Lifetime Achievement and Best New American Play awards, there are no fixed categories at the Obie Awards, and the winning actors and actresses are all in a single category titled "Performance." There are no announced nominations. Awards in the past have included performance , direction , best production, design , special citations, and sustained achievement. Not every category

667-403: The floor black, was supported by a coffee shop seating 150 patrons with revenue from the sale of food and drink in a dining separated from the gallery by a red partition. With most prints selling for between $ 25 and $ 60 each (equivalent to $ 200-$ 500 in 2019), takings from the gallery sales rarely met expenses as photography was not considered a collectible art form until the 1970s. Nevertheless,

696-541: The group show Great Photographs sold nearly half of its 45 pictures on exhibition. Gee took 25% commission, and sales up to the gallery's closure totalled about $ 5,000. Limelight provided many of its exhibitors with their first show, or their first show in New York. The exhibitions attracted regular reviews from John "Jack" Deschin in the New York Times , and less often from "John Adam Knight" (Pierre de Rohan) in

725-455: The north end of the Park, the avenue carries traffic in both directions through Harlem , where it is called Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard. Addresses continue as if the street was continuous through Central Park, with the first block north of the park being the 1800 block. The United States Postal Service delivers mail using either street name. As is the case with " Sixth Avenue " and " Avenue of

754-435: The park and a two-way street north of it. Seventh Avenue originates in the West Village at Clarkson Street, where Varick Street becomes Seventh Avenue South (which becomes Seventh Avenue proper after the road crosses Greenwich Avenue and West 11th Street ). It is interrupted by Central Park from 59th to 110th Street . Artisans' Gate is the 59th Street exit from Central Park to Seventh Avenue. North of Warriors' Gate at

783-779: The showing of The Family of Man at MoMA (1955), several who were included congregated at Limelight; Arthur Lavine , May Mirin , Hella Hammid , Simpson Kalisher , Ray Jacobs , Ruth Orkin , and Ed Wallowitch . Although the gallery closed in 1961 due to financial and union pressure, it had pioneered sales of photographs as art, showing the works of prominent contemporary and historic photographers. In her gallery Helen Gee organised and presented these sixty-one exhibitions: In 1997, Gee published her autobiography, itself titled Limelight: A Memoir , reissued in 2016 by Aperture with an introduction by Denise Bethel (formerly Chair of Photographs and Americas, Sotheby's New York). Covering mostly her creation and running of Limelight Gallery,

812-481: The year following Limelight's opening, and increased attention to the medium. Gee married Columbia University professor, Kevin Sullivan, in 1959. Having committed all her own funds to the gallery and still in debt, Gee sold and closed Limelight on January 31, 1961, after a show of the work of Julia Margaret Cameron . The new owners continued showing photographs for a short period and, failing to attract reviews, soon discontinued them and in turn sold up in less than

841-411: Was able to establish herself in a good apartment and to send Li-lan to private school. Helen Gee bought a Rolleiflex at the suggestion of client Paul Radkai, and enrolled in photography classes with Alexey Brodovitch , then Lisette Model and finally Sid Grossman . With that experience she decided to open a gallery instead of becoming a photographer, and with her own finance she founded and managed

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