From the 1950s until shortly before his death in 2008, Jerald Ordover practiced law in New York City, representing many of the leading artists and galleries of the latter half of the twentieth century. He was legal counsel to Leo Castelli, his gallery, and many of his artists for more than forty years, also providing a wide range of legal services for hundreds of other artists, dealers, and arts organizations, often working pro bono or in exchange for works of art which he gratefully received without regard for the status of an artist's career.

Taking its title from a drawing made for him by Richard Serra, the exhibition illuminates Jerry Ordover's many vital contributions to the New York art community and celebrates his passion for artists and the art world he helped to form.

In the early 1960s, through introductions provided by his friend Ivan Karp, then director of Castelli Gallery, Ordover rapidly became one of the first attorneys with a specialized practice in the visual arts. When artists and galleries moved to SoHo, he followed them there, handling leases and helping Fluxus artist George Maciunas with building purchases that established the first artist-owned coops in the neighborhood. He formed not-for-profit corporations for a wide range of avant-garde performance groups, often serving on their boards, and was instrumental in the establishment of such New York institutions as El Museo del Barrio and Electronic Arts Intermix. Associated for many years with Charlotte Moorman's Avant Garde Festival, he is acknowledged by composer La Monte Young and artist Marian Zazeela's MELA Foundation as an "Advisor in Memoriam," alongside Dominique De Menil, John Cage, and Merce Cunningham.

Ordover's advocacy of the arts included helping form the contract for the US government's Art in Architecture Program, that mandated the inclusion of art in all new federal buildings. He was also centrally involved in the landmark Richard Serra Tilted Arc case.

Among his closest friends and clients was Lawrence Weiner with whom he worked to develop a system of registration of the artist's text-based works, maintaining his records of ownership for many years. The exhibition features more than fifty objects including drawings and multiples by Lawrence Weiner; Hans Namuth's famous photographs of Jackson Pollock in his studio; Andy Warhol's Silver Clouds from 1966; prints and a collaged construction by Frank Stella; a unique box of found objects by George Maciunas; drawings, collages and notes to Ordover from H.C. Westermann; signed and inscribed posters from Dan Flavin; a Rauchbild (Smoke Picture) by Zero artist Otto Piene; and Salvatore Scarpitta's child-sized racing car entitled Ordover Special from 1969. The exhibition also acknowledges Ordover's long friendship with Seth Siegelaub by including an early draft of the historic Artists Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement developed in 1971 by Siegelaub and attorney Bob Projansky.

With seemingly limitless energy and enthusiasm, Jerry Ordover was a ubiquitous presence at gallery openings throughout the city from the earliest days of SoHo to the beginnings of the Chelsea art district. Also on view are a group of his black and white snapshots of gallery openings, lent by White Columns director Matthew Higgs who discovered them last year at the 25th Street Flea Market and showed them at White Columns earlier this year.