Founded in 2013 by Katie Michel, Planthouse Gallery is a project space located on 28th street in New York City. Planthouse took its namesake from its original home located on the storied block between Sixth and Seventh Avenues that represents the vibrant center of city’s flower district. In 2015, the gallery relocated nearby, to 55 West 28th Street, trading in tulips and trees for the wholesale shops that now populate Tin Pan Alley, the strip between Fifth and Sixth Avenues which historically housed the city’s musicians, shops, and musical publishers in the early twentieth century. Planthouse is located on the parlor floor of a brownstone dating back to this period, and we hope the (colorful) ghosts of the past will continue to inspire our future and our commitment to exhibiting and publishing the contemporary work of emerging and established artists.

Michel worked at the Grenfell Press from 1995–2017, a printer and publisher of artist’s books and limited edition prints. She is a graphic designer, printer and print publisher; she serves on the board of Wave Hill, a public garden and cultural center in the Bronx. Michel is a member of the Victory Garden Collective formed in 2016 in response to the presidential primaries. Their projects take cues from suffragette movements, with a mission to galvanize women to keep pushing for change. Michel attended Yale University and is the great-great granddaughter of Jules Bache who amassed a collection of art including pieces attributed to Goya, Raphael, Rembrandt, Titian and Vermeer, most of which was donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. She is also the granddaughter of Betsy Beinecke Shirley, whose collection of first edition American children’s literature was bequeathed to the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University. Grenfell Press and Planthouse publications are in the collections of The Getty Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The New York Public Library, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, and The Whitney Museum of American Art.

The archive of Planthouse can be found at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University.