NICOLE KLAGSBRUN
For more than 40 years, Nicole Klagsbrun has worked closely with leading artists and estates to organize exhibitions at the forefront of contemporary art. In partnership with Clarissa Dalrymple, Klagsbrun opened Cable Gallery in 1984, which became renowned for showing young artists across diverse backgrounds and disciplines. This included introducing the work of Ashley Bickerton, Christopher Wool, Barbara Ess, and Haim Steinbach.
In 1989, Klagsbrun opened Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery at 59 Greene Street in SoHo. The program continued to represent artists working in a variety of media including painting, sculpture, video, photography, installation, and assemblage. Klagsbrun organized Karen Kilimnik’s first exhibition in New York (1989), Candida Höfer’s first exhibition in the United States (1991), and Rashid Johnson’s first gallery exhibition (2008), among many others. In addition, Klagsbrun mounted exhibitions of artists whose practices had been under-recognized in the New York art world, such as Wallace Berman, Jay DeFeo, John Giorno, and Cameron.
In 2013, Klagsbrun closed her gallery and has remained active as the New York representative of the Cameron Parsons Estate. She has produced off-site exhibitions for Brie Ruais (2014), Lee Quinones (2016), and Jonathan Silver (2017). Originally from Belgium, Klagsbrun graduated from La Cambre School of Architecture and Visual Arts, Brussels, Belgium in 1979. She arrived in New York in 1980.
CAMERON
Cameron (Marjorie Cameron Parsons Kimmel)
Cameron was born in 1922 in Belle Plaine, lowa and died in 1995 in Los Angeles, California. During World War II, she enlisted in the United States Navy, where she served as a cartographer and photographer. After the war, she settled in southern California and immersed herself in the jazz bohemia of South Central Avenue in Los Angeles. In 1946, she met Jack Parsons, a branch leader of Aleister Crowley's occult society Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), and he initiated Cameron into magical rites. The couple were married from 1946 until Parson's death in 1952.
Throughout her career, Cameron befriended and influenced many prominent artists. The Beat artist Wallace Berman featured a photograph of Cameron on the cover of the first issue of his publication Semina, and the inclusion of her erotic drawing Untitled (Peyote Vision) (1955) in Berman's 1957 show at the Ferus Gallery led the LAPD Vice Squad to shut down the exhibition over claims of obscenity. This led Cameron and Berman to refuse showing their work in commercial galleries for the rest of their lives. Cameron's star turn on screen came when Kenneth Anger cast her as the Scarlet Woman in his groundbreaking film Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954). The filmmaker Curtis Harrington was so impressed by her scene-stealing presence that he cast her in his films Wormwood Star (1956) and Night Tide (1961).
Cameron was also a poet, and in 1964 she published Black Pilgrimage, a volume of mystical poems and ink drawings. Her writings appeared in Semina as well as her notebooks and sketchbooks.
Concurrent with this exhibition, Cameron's work can be seen at the Museum of Sex, New York, in Higher Love: The Psychedelic Roots of Modern Sexuality until September 17. In 2026, Cameron's work will be included in an exhibition on Tarot at the Morgan Library & Museum.
Past solo exhibitions include Cameron: Cinderella of the Wastelands, Jeffrey Deitch, New York (2015); Cameron: Songs for the Witch Woman, MOCA Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles (2014); Cameron, Nicole Klagsbrun (2007); and The Pearl of Reprisal, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (1989). Past group shows include Sci-Fi, Magick, Queer L.A., USC Fisher Museum, Los Angeles (2024); Of Mythic Worlds: Works from the Distant Past through the Present, The Drawing Center, New York (2023); Drawing Down the Moon, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2022); PACIFIC STANDARD TIME: Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture 1950-1970, The Getty Museum, Los Angeles (2011); Traces du Sacré, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2008); Semina Culture: Wallace Berman and His Circle, Santa Monica Museum of Art (2005); and Beat Culture and the New America 1950-1956, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1996).