Terrain Gallery

Under the direction of painter Dorothy Koppelman,[3] the Terrain Gallery opened on February 26, 1955 with the publication of Siegel’s fifteen questions, Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites?

[5] Bennett Schiff in the New York Post wrote that "there probably hasn't been a gallery before this like the Terrain, which devotes itself to the integration of art with all of living according to an esthetic principle which is part of an entire, encompassing philosophic theory...Aesthetic Realism developed and taught by Eli Siegel".

"[9] Although exhibiting artists were not required to endorse Aesthetic Realism,[6] many wrote comments on the Siegel Theory of Opposites in relation to their work, which were displayed with their art.

[11] Artists whose work has been exhibited at the Terrain Gallery include Ad Reinhardt, Larry Rivers, Chaim Koppelman, Robert Blackburn, Roy Lichtenstein, Hans Namuth, Dorothy Koppelman, André Kertész, Mark Di Suvero, Will Barnet, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Richard Artschwager, George Tooker, Lois Dodd, Jim Dine, Elaine de Kooning, and Steve Poleskie.

[13] In 1967, 105 painters, sculptors, printmakers and photographers participated in the exhibition All Art Is For Life and Against the War in Vietnam held at the Terrain to benefit napalm-burned and crippled Vietnamese children.

These talks discussed topics such as how precision and abandon are one in Jackson Pollock's action painting,[16] what mothers can learn about children from the art of Mary Cassatt, “Can Exuberance Be Sensible?

[11] Existing records of one of the discussions held at the Terrain in 1961 indicate that many artists felt that while opposites were undeniably present in their work, the conscious awareness of them would "lessen, or somehow destroy, the 'magic,' the 'talent,' the 'je ne sais quoi'" of art.

[26] The Terrain Gallery published Personal & Impersonal: Six Aesthetic Realists, a book of poems by Sheldon Kranz, Louis Dienes, Nancy Starrels, Nat Hertz, Martha Baird and Rebecca Fein[27] and held an exhibition of work by 45 artists, including Leonard Baskin, Robert Andrew Parker, and Nathan Cabot Hale, inspired by the poems.