Ground Zero Gallery

Ground Zero Gallery was an art gallery formed in the East Village / Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York in the summer of 1983 as a vehicle for the partnership of artist James Romberger and his wife Marguerite Van Cook. In 1984 the gallery found its first physical home on East Eleventh Street and showed the work of many East Village artists who went on to gain national recognition. It was an early proponent of installation art. Ground Zero served as the production name for many projects in various media undertaken by the team of Van Cook and Romberger, until the September 11 attacks gave a new meaning to the term "ground zero" in New York City.Early yearsGround Zero opened its first gallery site in 1984. It remained in this location until the following year, when it moved into a larger space on East Tenth Street facing Tompkins Square Park. Romberger and Van Cook presented and pioneered the concept of installations and multimedia environments and hosted many performance events. These included the première of Cinema of Transgression director Richard Kern’s You Killed Me First, featuring Karen Finley and David Wojnarowicz, which was part of an installation presented by David Wojnarowicz entitled Installation number 8. Other installations presented were Hell by Mike Osterhout, Zero Gravity by Dragan Ilic and Cold War by Marguerite Van Cook.