Raphael Soyer: Back in the Day July 21 - September 10, 2005 Reception: Thursday, July 21, 5:30 - 7:30 pm In 1966, Raphael Soyer and I lived seven blocks from each other in New York City, but we never met. For Soyer, a successful artist with critically acclaimed museum and gallery shows, it was a return to the Lower East Side and his immigrant roots. For me, a struggling graduate student, it was the East Village, capital of an accelerating counterculture movement, a teeming cauldron where art and progressive politics combined to direct me on my life's path. His father and my grandfather were both Russian immigrants who came to this country to pursue a better life for their families.