The Wedding Show

On December 17, 1969, Tiny Tim married Victoria "Miss Vicki" Budinger on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. Their televised wedding garnered forty five million viewers, the program’s highest-ever ratings, that is, until Carson’s retirement. For comparison, Kim Kardashian and Ye’s wedding in 2014, while admittedly a live re-enactment of their earlier, private ceremony, earned a live viewership of five million people. To what should we attribute this discrepancy? One theory is that the public now understands the impetus for this performed record of self, and so the whole affair loses its luster. In the wake of the golden age of reality TV, it would perhaps be more surprising if America’s incumbent royalty did not live-stream their wedding. 

But for the American public of the 1960s, there was an undeniable novelty, and fascination. A new form of entertainment technology had wedged its way, deeply, into the country’s psyche and culture. Savvy to this, the performer and musician Tiny Tim operated with a skillful pragmatism, exploring the formal possibilities of this emergent medium, and his penchant for spectacle remains front-of-mind at curtain open. The way they face away from the camera, and are without microphones, their vows barely audible in the recordings online, as if whispered over the course of their forty-five second huddle with the officiant. I’m left delighted by the utter lack of cynicism, despite the cameras. There are no winks or nods to the audience, just a stage, and a ceremony for a union, strange and brief.

With that in mind, I’m pleased to announce The Wedding Show, the inaugural exhibition for my eponymous gallery, Pietro Alexander. Pietro Alexander shares the final address of Brooke Alexander Gallery, established in 1968 by my aunt, Carolyn Alexander, and late uncle, Brooke Alexander. They relocated the gallery to 59 Wooster Street in the early 1980’s. In 1995, Carolyn would leave to co-found Alexander and Bonin with Ted Bonin. Now, in 2026, Miss Sara Apple and I will stage our marriage ceremony in the gallery, thirty minutes before this debut exhibition opens to the public.

My bride, Sara, is the avowed New Yorker I fell in love with four years ago, and I would not be embarking upon this new venture in this new city without her. We met because of Jaxon Demme, one of the artists featured in this exhibition. Our lives and our relationship have been indelibly shaped by art, the art world, and our work within it. I promised Sara that I would open a gallery in her city shortly after we met, while I was running SPY Projects, my then gallery program in LA. And so this is a celebration of promises made and kept, and a new chapter for our lives together.

As is traditional for an inaugural exhibition, The Wedding Show is a group show. It’s also a survey of work that is meaningful to me, personally, as a viewer and as a dealer. There’s my allegiance to the West Coast artists who informed my early taste, and who I came of age admiring: Peter Alexander, Ken Price, Craig Kauffman, Laddie John Dill, John Altoon, and Billy Al Bengston. There are the Contemporary artists whom I exhibited at SPY Projects, including Jaxon Demme, Daniel Healey and Christian Vincent; artists who helped me find my bearings and my voice as a curator. And there are artists in this city, who I’m joining: Cristine Brache, Ryan Brown, Kay Kasparhauser, Tallulah Dirnfeld and Christopher Jordan, who offer a hint at what’s to come. I owe this show to New York, down to the idea for a wedding show itself, which was gifted to me by artist and poet Stefan Bondell.

In a sense, every gallery's first exhibition is a wedding show, a symbolically rich and boozy party where past and present look forward. They are celebrations of life and dedications to the work to come. It’ll be our pleasure to have you.