(Photo: Kenneth Chen)

When we fantasize about life in a mile-long, pure-white loft, the walls are dotted with splashy vintage posters. Toulouse-Lautrec’s snapshots of Parisian gaiety, French ads for aperitifs, sixties images of TWA jetliners, exhortations to VISIT THE WORLD’S FAIR!—they exemplify nearly every design movement of the twentieth century. We cultivate this fantasy at Chelsea’s Gail Chisholm Gallery, recently relocated to a sunny new loft (56 West 22nd Street, second floor; 212-243-8834). Those colorful ads are Chisholm’s specialty, and she has thousands in stock and more arriving all the time. (Prices can go well into five figures, but you can do nicely for $500 and extremely well for a couple of grand.) She also hangs thematic exhibits, so you can “collect” vicariously at no charge. And while you’re there, pop in next door at J. Fields Gallery, which is perhaps the country’s prime poster-restoration house. They make a handsome couple—poster children, you might say.

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• Archive: “Best of New York Weekly”
• Articles by Christopher Bonanos
• Table of Contents: Nov 10, 2003 issue of New York | Subscribe!