Mary Boone, the famed New York art dealer, may have been released from prison over five years ago, but she just now seems ready to make her comeback tour.
Last week, Lévy Gorvy Dayan opened the exhibition “Downtown/Uptown: New York in the Eighties,” organized in collaboration with Boone, who made her name as the preeminent dealer of the SoHo art scene of the period. She was known for giving key shows to Jean-Michel Basquiat, Ross Bleckner, Keith Haring, and Julian Schnabel, all of whom are featured in the new exhibition.
Ahead of the opening, Boone talked with New York magazine—which famously dubbed her the “queen of the art scene” for a cover story in 1982. Wearing the same leopard-print Norma Kamali dress she wore for that New York cover shoot, Boone finally talked about her time in prison. (In 2019, she closed her gallery and was convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to 30 months in prison. She served 13 after securing early release during the height of the Covid pandemic in 2020.) She seemed to describe it like a fun staycation.
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“To tell you the truth, I got to go to the gym every day. I read a book a day. It was very relaxing,” Boone said of her time at Danbury Correctional, a low-security prison in Connecticut. “I met some very interesting women that I probably wouldn’t have met otherwise,” she added.
As for who gave her some advice ahead of her conviction? None other than Martha Stewart, another unlikely figure sent to prison for white collar crime—in her case, five months for obstruction of justice related to an insider-trading case in 2004. Stewart reportedly told Boone to get a criminal lawyer early in the case because the government has “people they like to use as examples.” Boone said she didn’t listen to Stewart’s suggestion then, but perhaps she did later. Boone requested Danbury Correctional, the same prison Stewart requested for her prison time. (Stewart was denied that request and instead sent to a prison in West Virginia.)
And like Stewart, Boone seems to have bounced back from her time in prison quickly. She told New York‘s Carrie Battan that she was back to selling art soon after her release and that 2022 was her best year on record. “People were staying at home looking at their house and thinking, I need something for that wall,” she said.