Bestsellers
Our Story: The Legacy of Margo Feiden
Long before she became one of the most recognized names in American art dealing, Margo Feiden was already breaking records. At just 16 years old, she produced and directed a musical version of Peter Pan — becoming the youngest Broadway producer, director, and playwright in history, a distinction recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records. By 17, she was managing the career of mentalist Kuda Bux, appearing alongside him on stage and television.
Margo's interests never stayed in one lane. A licensed pilot, she spent her early adulthood flying — at one point taking photographer Diane Arbus on flights over Manhattan so Arbus could photograph the city from above. That same restless curiosity led her, almost by accident, into the art world: in 1969 she rented a Greenwich Village gallery space before she had a single piece of art to put in it. Arbus herself stepped in with the gallery's first exhibition.
A year later, Margo met Al Hirschfeld, beginning a professional partnership that would define both of their legacies. Over the following decades, the Margo Feiden Galleries — housed in a historic Stanford White townhouse — became the place where Hirschfeld's work lived: his hand-signed drawings, watercolors, and lithographs, spanning 75 years of American theater and entertainment history.
Margo was, by every account, a formidable presence — tenacious, direct, and unwilling to be told no. In an industry and era when women rarely ran their own galleries, let alone one representing a legend of Hirschfeld's stature, that tenacity wasn't incidental. It was the cost of entry. The same qualities that some described as difficult were, to those who knew the landscape she was navigating, simply what it took for a woman to build and protect a business of that scale in Manhattan's art world at the time.
Margo passed away in April 2022 at age 77. Her collection and legacy now continue through her family, and we're honored to carry forward the work of preserving and sharing these original, hand-signed Hirschfeld lithographs with collectors who value the history behind every piece.
