Sara Penn

Sara Penn (1927–2020) was the owner of Knobkerry, a clothing and antiques store, gallery, cultural center, and arts space in Downtown Manhattan from the 1960s to the 1990s.

Her great aunt followed Booker T. Washington's urge to provide skilled training for newly freed slaves, teaching quilting and sewing.

Eventually moving back to New York, she took a job as a social worker and began a romantic relationship with the painter Wolf Kahn.

Kahn and Penn were regulars at the Cedar Bar where she met artists like Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline and Joan Mitchell.

[2] Her store Knobkerry, was a reference to "The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God", a 1932 short story by George Bernard Shaw.

[4] The store changed locations numerous times, and other than a short stint in California, remained generally in Manhattan's Lower East Side.

Another was a deflated basketball filled with rice, placed atop a tiny lounge chair with chewing gum on its underside, all placed within a glass case with shelves holding Japanese dolls, Indian bronzes, and wood or iron African figurines.

[11] This oral history was ultimately compiled for a 2021 exhibition at SculptureCenter–curated by interim director Kyle Dancewicz and including sculptures by Niloufar Emamifar and SoiL Thornton.