Helen Gee

Who is Helen Gee?

Helen Gee was an influential art gallery owner. She was born as Helen Charlotte Wimmer in Jersey City, New Jersey, and went to New York when she was sixteen to live with a modernist painter named Yun Gee. They were married in 1942, but when Yun was diagnosed with schizophrenia and threatened to become violent, Helen left him, taking their infant daughter Li-lan. She later married Kevin Sullivan, but that ended in divorce. Gee taught herself transparency retouching for a living. In the 1950s, she came across a photography show at the Museum of Modern Art, which inspired her interest in photography.

In 1954 she opened New York's first important post-war photography gallery, the Limelight, on Seventh Avenue South and Barrow Street. Although the gallery closed in 1961 due to financial pressure, it had pioneered sales of photographs as art.

In the late 1970s Gee worked as a photography curator, lecturer and writer.

In 1997 she published her memoir of her time with the Limelight, itself titled Limelight: A Memoir.

Gee's gallery was inside a coffee shop, and the Village Voice's first Obie Awards ceremony was held at her café.