3 New Art Galleries Opening This Fall, From Manhattan to Tokyo
The art market may have softened some, but the wobble hasn’t curbed art dealers’ ambitions. Veteran and first-time gallerists alike continue to dream big, whether they’re venturing into new neighborhoods, conquering new markets in far-flung countries, or opening the very first spaces of their own. Here, the heads of three galleries share their plans for much-anticipated debuts in New York, Tokyo, and Los Angeles.
Marian Goodman Gallery | New York City
The partners at Marian Goodman have been busy since its venerated namesake, now 96, turned over daily operations in 2021. Last year, they debuted its first L.A. space, and in October the gallery will move to the growing art enclave of Tribeca after more than four decades on West 57th Street, where it was long a destination for seekers of intellectually rigorous, socially aware work but became increasingly isolated as the art world migrated downtown.
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In addition to a new neighborhood, the gallery will have street-level space in New York for the first time, as it stretches out over the five-floor Grosvenor Building. One of president Philipp Kaiser’s favorite perks: “We don’t have rigging. When we did sculpture shows on 57th Street, you had to get a crane and rig in sculptures through tiny windows.”
The gallery has lost a few very big names since its founder stepped back—including Gerhard Richter and William Kentridge—but has also added several artists with burgeoning reputations, such as Andrea Fraser, Daniel Boyd, and Delcy Morelos. “It’s obvious we’re in a phase of transition,” Kaiser says. “And I think we all know that the gallery is like a living organism that is changing.”
The inaugural exhibition in October will showcase works from all of the roughly 50 artists on the roster, including a photograph from the recent solar eclipse by An-My Lê, a “live constructed situation” (don’t say “performance”) by Tino Sehgal using gallery staff, and an installment from Pierre Huyghe’s “Timekeeper” series, which excavates museums’ layers of wall paint in compositions that look like tree rings. In what promises to lend a touching dose of nostalgia to the festivities, this piece will preserve remnants of the old gallery. Says Rose Lord, a managing partner: “Parts of 57th Street will literally be transported to the Tribeca space.”
Pace | Tokyo
Marc Glimcher, the wisecracking CEO of Pace—the mega gallery founded by his father, Arne, in 1960—admits that when he first floated the idea of opening a Tokyo outpost, his team’s collective response was, “Are you out of your mind?” Pace was already dealing with a new L.A. site and an expanded one in Seoul, in addition to its eight-story New York flagship and spaces in London, Geneva, and Hong Kong.
Fast-forward a couple of years, and Pace Tokyo will bow this month in the city’s futuristic Azabudai Hills. “Who doesn’t love Japan?” he says. “I said to my artists, ‘Everybody who wants to have a show in Japan, raise your hand,’ and, like, 120 hands went up.”
With Hong Kong having lost its luster, Japan has been on an upswing. Blum opened there a decade ago, and Perrotin arrived in 2017. Pace’s long-standing ties to the country include representing homegrown star Yoshitomo Nara since 2011.
The land of the rising sun has turned art-world heads before. The nation made headlines for snatching up priceless masterpieces in the 1980s before its economy imploded and collectors dried up. “The thing about Japan is it responds to stress with radical isolation,” Glimcher says, referencing its centuries-long history of shunning outsiders. But he is quick to add that the art scene there is markedly different today. “This is a new generation. These are entrepreneurs who are starting collections and museums, not corporations making alternative asset bases.”
The new gallery consists of three floors in a Thomas Heatherwick building, and the first artists up—Maysha Mohamedi, Adam Pendleton, and Arlene Shechet—are all critically acclaimed and in high demand, but new to Japan. “I wanted to hit them with three shows in a row of artists they’ve never heard of,” Glimcher says. “I did think they were going to vibe well in Japan, but more importantly, I wanted to shake the Japanese art world a little bit.”
Megan Mulrooney Gallery | Los Angeles
In May, after gallerist Nino Mier was accused of shortchanging some of his artists, he abruptly closed the L.A. branch of his operation. Now its former senior director is taking much of his real estate there and hanging out her own shingle.
Though the details came together quickly, Megan Mulrooney says the plan to strike out had been percolating for a while. Snapping up the shuttered spaces enabled her to avoid a protracted hunt for property and set a fast-approaching September 14 opening.
Technically, the gallery consists of a trio of addresses on Santa Monica Boulevard. Mulrooney says she’ll program them so that the exhibitions are in dialogue, with an eye toward facilitating an “intergenerational conversation” between emerging and midcareer artists, some of whom she worked with at Mier. “You go into the next space with the idea of the previous one,” she explains.
Her debut lineup includes solo shows by Marin Majić, whose marble-dusted canvases evoke other worlds, and Piper Bangs, a much-watched painter despite being fresh out of art school. For the third space, Mulrooney says she hopes to enlist artists as curators. “I’m really interested in having them curate shows so that I’ll be able to delve further into their histories, understand who influences them, who is in their circle of artists, how they connect and see the world,” she says. First up is Jon Pylypchuk.
A native Angeleno, Mulrooney got her start at Sotheby’s in London. She later gained experience as an appraiser and then at the online platform Paddle8. But joining Mier helped her realize that she could channel her know-how into developing artists’ careers. “I think the purpose of any great gallery—and what I hope my gallery will be—is that you walk out and you are enlivened,” she says. “You walk out and you are hopeful about yourself and the world.”
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