It used to be that when you walked through Times Square, you were beckoned over by the operators of peep shows, strip clubs, porn theaters, and the like, as a potential customer or sometimes as a possible new hire, depending on your perceived gender and what sort of club it was. Nowadays, unless you’re walking fast and wearing a “Don’t bother me, I live here” expression, you’re likely to be pursued by a Disney or PBS puppet character hoping for a tip in exchange for posing for a photo, especially if you have kids in tow (though the aggressively panhandling Elmos and Cookie Monsters are not quite the plague they were a decade ago). Because these days, Times Square is largely for kids, which anyone who’s hosted out-of-town nieces and nephews knows (the M&M store is much in demand).
But artists Vivienne Maricevic, Scott Ewalt, and Alix Vernet, using various media and personal experiences, have brought back that seedy urban world — from the late 1960s through the mid-’80s — in “Live Sex Acts.” Presented by Times Square Space, an artist residency and exhibition program presenting art projects in vacant office and retail spaces, and New Discretions (and curated by Benjamin Tischer and Tiffany Zabludowicz), the show “opens at a moment when the political gains of the last several decades are being actively reversed, when bodies, desires, and the spaces that accommodate them are once again subject to legislation and erasure. In that context, an archive of Times Square’s sex culture is not a historical exercise but a reminder that these freedoms were always contingent, always contested, and always worth defending.”
Truth be told, there are no live performances in the exhibition. But the heyday of Times Square decadence is captured in photos, archives, and installation works by Maricevic, Ewalt, and Vernet. Sixty-plus images from the 1980s by photographer Maricevic capture clubs like Show World, the Pussycat, Show Palace Follies, Crazy Horse, and Chez Elle. Ewalt, who began as a painter and moved into digital imaging in 1987, worked with demolition crews when Times Square was getting a makeover, collecting signs, posters, and ephemera before it was destroyed. Vernet, while archiving this time period, found a peep show with the same owner as NYC’s Show World, then tracked down bits of its neoclassical awning and cast the remaining objects for her re-creation of the club.
On Saturday, September 26, an artists’ talk with Maricevic and Ewalt will be held at the Printed Matter Book Fair at MOMA P.S.1, celebrating the publication of New York Then: 1986–1992, a collection of portraits taken by Maricevic in the late 1980s and early ’90s.
So dodge the harried crowds that swarm through today’s sanitized Times Square and immerse yourself in some of the upfront decadence of yesteryear. ❖
“Live Sex Acts”
Times Square Space
Thursday–Saturday, 12–6 p.m.
September 18–November 15, 2026
Must be 18 or over
1500 Broadway
Times Square, NY
Saturday, September 26:
Vivienne Maricevic and Scott Ewalt in conversation
Printed Matter Book Fair
3 p.m.
MOMA P.S.1
22-25 Jackson Avenue
Queens, NY
