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Meanwhile, Audart was
taking its gallery online and beginning to broadcast its openings live
on the internet. It was early 1997 and the corporate
world was beginning to pay attention to what was happening in the once
deserted bank. With five exhibitions already
behind them, including the highly successful "Ten Years After: The Warhol Factory",
Audart was now planning the Art
& Technology Circus. Audrey Regan came up with the circus
concept, as a way to integrate
art and technology and
capitalize even further on Audart's interdisciplinary
approach. John Toth, an established multimedia artist and designer
created the first "tent" in the Audart gallery. Other tents were
created by a number of artists. Artworks discovered on the
internet by
Regan, were shipped to NYC from all over the world to be exhibited in
the
Circus and performance rehearsals
took place in the gallery, for months, at all hours
of the day and night. The Audart Gallery was being described in the
media as a "spaceship" and a zone of perpetual twilight where the work
of creativity never stopped. The Art & Technology Circus opening was
attended by 3000 people, topped only by the Warhol opening which attracted
5000 people.  It was to
be the final
farewell. The sale
of 60 Broad Street in January of 1998 brought the notice Regan and
London had expected and it prompted a game of speculation about the
future of the space. One thing seemed certain as
Audart packed up and moved on to other dreams - the new tenants would
not work by candlelight
amid crimson silk and yellow velvet, while artists
worked from ladders and napped in darkened corners
of art filled rooms.There
could never be another SoHo, no matter how many dollars are spent
trying to make it happen, but it cannot be
said that art, in all its glory, didn't happen in New York's financial
district. It was a brief flash of light, missed by many, but experienced
by thousands.
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