Gritty Scene, Mostly Male and White.

What would the proverbial alien, beamed into the Grey Art Gallery for a viewing of ''Downtown Pix: Mining the Fales Archives, 1961-1991,'' discern about New York toward the end of the last millennium? Maybe this: That it was very gritty, very gay and very Caucasian. Organized by Philip Gefter, a former picture editor for The New York Times, the exhibition includes more than 300 photographs and serves as a kind of sequel to ''The Downtown Show: The New York Art Scene, 1974-1984'' from 2006. Like that display, this one reminds us what the arts scene in the East Village, SoHo and TriBeCa was like at the height of the AIDS epidemic, before gentrification and before the downtown ethos and aesthetic were packaged into family viewing spectacles like ''Rent'' or those by Blue Man Group. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]