[5][6] Sandler curated several critically acclaimed[8][9][10][11][12] exhibitions including the "Concrete Expressionism Show" in 1965 at New York University, which featured the work of painters Al Held and Knox Martin and the sculptors Ronald Bladen, George Sugarman and David Weinrib,[13] and "The Prospect Mountain Sculpture Show" in 1977.
[14] Sandler interviewed many American artists throughout his long career, including first generation abstract expressionists such as Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning, Phillip Guston, and Franz Kline in 1957 and later pop protagonists such as Tom Wesselmann in 1984.
In 1972, he co-founded the not-for-profit alternative gallery Artists Space with Trudie Grace, which helped launch the careers of Judy Pfaff, Barbara Kruger and Cindy Sherman amongst others.
Robert Storr has described the history, "Narrative, untheoretical--at times antitheoretical--and unapologetically focused not just on what happened in the United States but principally on what happened in Manhattan, Sandler's surveys have been widely criticized but even more widely used, not least because they are readable and deeply informed by their author's unrivaled access to the artists and art-worldings about whom he writes.
"[16] Sandler continued to write about art during his final years and was concerned with readdressing his earlier "canonical" works on abstract expressionism with the benefit of historical distance.