In 1971, she opened the Sonnabend Gallery, in a building at 420 W. Broadway in Soho. The industrial chic restoration instantly became the center of the emerging SoHo art scene. She inaugurated her gallery with a performance by Gilbert & George. She exhibited American artists like Jeff Koons and Vito Acconci, and introduced European artists like Christo, Georg Baselitz, and Jannis Kounellis to U.S. audiences. When the performance artist Vito Acconci announced that his performance piece "Seedbed" called for him to masturbate in her gallery for two weeks in 1972, Sonnabend simply replied, "You do what you have to do."