Gallery & Foundation
Our Story
LAURA STRAUS graduated from Wesleyan University with a B.A. in studio art. She has taught ceramics, drawing and photography. Her work in photography received first place at the Camera Club of New York and she was awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship as well as a teaching position at Cornell and TC3. She has also published ten books of photography with Andrew’s & McMeel and Hearst Books.
Her new work focuses on creating vibrant and colorful paintings as well as porcelain and plant pairings and sculpture installations. You can visit her new gallery in Washington Depot, CT.
Laura founded Piermont Straus Foundation, a non-profit organization and gallery. PS Foundation created the Piermont Chamber of Commerce (2012-2019), and Rockland Culture (2016-2019). The Piermont Chamber of Commerce was awarded numerous grants and a new map and brochure was created for the Village of Piermont. The Foundation also initiated a public art festival called Art in the Park, an art fair free to artists that was generously supported by Orange & Rockland Utilities, the Arts Alive Grant Program facilitated by Arts Westchester, and Rockland County Tourism. The festival ran from 2013 through 2018.
Rockland Culture was formed in 2016 and received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Rockland County Tourism, and Arts Alive. The program developed a map, brochure and website, tracing the artistic treasures of the “Left Bank” of the Hudson River.
Our original gallery logo was created Martin Kase’s branding team, Bakunin Brothers, and was inspired by the Piermont Flywheel monument, located in our original location in the Flywheel Park in Piermont, NY.
Artist Biography
Laura Straus is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice is informed by a longstanding engagement with photography, publishing, and artists’ rights. Her early career was shaped by her work at Magnum Photos in New York, where she served as an editor from 1989 to 1993. Daily immersion in the work of photographers including Joseph Koudelka, Eugene Richards, Sebastião Salgado, Elliott Erwitt, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Susan Meiselas played a formative role in establishing her understanding of photographic language, narrative, and visual ethics.
From 1994 to 1998, Straus worked as Director of Photography at Abbeville Press, where she gained extensive experience in the production of art and photography books. This position provided her with direct insight into the editorial, curatorial, and material processes of art book publishing, further refining her sensitivity to image sequencing, reproduction, and material presentation.
Between 1998 and 2017, Straus worked with Artists Rights Society in Manhattan, representing the estates of major modern and contemporary artists including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Mark Rothko, among many others. This role deepened her engagement with questions of authorship, legacy, and the stewardship of artistic work.
In 2011, Straus opened a gallery in Piermont, New York, where she exhibited regional artists and hosted writers from the surrounding area, fostering interdisciplinary dialogue within the local arts community. Her own photography, paintings, and ceramic works were also exhibited during this period.
Straus’s multifaceted career continues to inform her studio practice, which reflects a sustained dialogue between image-making, material process, and the cultural systems that shape how art is produced, circulated, and preserved.
