Edwin Meulensteen with Steven Holl at Meulensteen Gallery, 2012. (Courtesy Patrick McMullan)

Meulensteen Gallery is closing its doors, we've learned via multiple sources. Located on 22nd Street on a ground-floor space in Chelsea, the gallery was formerly known as Max Protetch, which made a name for itself by presenting renderings and documents of architects like Frank Lloyd Wright, Steven Holl and Frank Gehry. Max Protetch sold the gallery in 2010 to Dutch-born businessman Edwin Meulensteen in response to the recession. And while he had hoped to keep the gallery's staff and its artist roster intact, that hasn't been working. Since 2010, it has lost 13 artists and suffered a change in directorship when long-time director Josie Browne left this year. Eric Gleason, coming from Marlborough Gallery, took on the directorship in February 2012. After two years of decline, Meulensteen is finally shutting its doors for good.

Artinfo, which first published news on the story, reports that the gallery could close as soon as Aug. 1.

Installation view of Franklin Evans's 'Eyesontheedge' at Sue Scott Gallery, 2012. (Courtesy Sue Scott Gallery)

Galleries have been opening at a rapid clip on the Lower East Side over the past few years, but today brings news that one will close. After four years in business, the Sue Scott Gallery will cease operations at the end of August, according to an e-mail announcement. Its final shows will end July 27. A call for comment to the gallery was not immediately returned.

In the e-mail announcing the closure, Ms. Scott says that she will return to working as a writer and curator, a decision she has made after "much thought and deliberation." She writes:

In the near term this includes writing The Reckoning: Women Artists of the New Millennium with Eleanor Heartney, Nancy Princenthal and Helaine Posner to be published by Prestel in 2013 along with the re-release of volume I [of] After the Revolution: Women Who Transformed Contemporary Art. I will also continue to work as an advisor and on special projects with our gallery artists.

Ms. Scott was among the first large wave of dealers to open on the Lower East Side when she settled there in 2008. Over the years, she has presented 24 exhibitions, including shows with Franklin Evans, Suzanne McClelland and Kristopher Benedict. She also organized shows with many established artists that are represented by other dealers, like Malcolm Morley (who shows with Sperone Westwater) and Pat Steir (who works with Cheim & Read).

Located on the second floor of 1 Rivingston Street, a short walk from the New Museum (and just a few feet from where Richard Prince once ran his Spiritual America gallery, at 5 Rivington, in the 1980s), the gallery has long defined the western edge of the Lower East Side gallery district. No longer.

Work by Bill Bollinger's in SculptureCenter's temporary annex. (Courtesy SculptureCenter)

The epic and beautiful Bill Bollinger retrospective on view at Long Island City's SculptureCenter is set to contract a bit after this weekend.

A temporary annex that is located down the block from the kunsthalle's main building and that now hosts four Bollinger sculptures will close after today. The space, which had been provided gratis by its owner, has been leased to a new occupant.

It's a sad development. But take heart! SculptureCenter is offering free admission and "#colddrinks," according to a representative at the museum. The Bollinger exhibition will still run through July 30, but today is the last day to see it in its complete form.

While the Bollinger show—a thorough survey of the late Post-Minimalist's nimble achievements from 1966 to 1970 that has finally graced our shores after a grand tour of European venues—should be reason enough to get you over to LIC, it is worth noting that MoMA PS1 is also hosting an open house today to toast new shows by the young German sculptor Esther Kläs and solo projects by Rey Akdogan, Edgardo Aragón, Ilja Karilampi and Caitlin Keogh.

Have a good weekend.

The live auction included a hypnotist. (Photo by Rozalia Jovanovic)

Tuesday night, March 6, alternative art space Exit Art celebrated its 30-year anniversary, and its closing, with a benefit to raise money for its final exhibition, "Every Exit is an Entrance: 30 Years of Exit Art," which opens on March 23. The benefit also served as a celebration of the life and work of Jeannette Ingberman who co-founded Exit Art in 1982 with her life partner Papo Colo. Ms. Ingberman passed away in August.

The date of the event was auspicious. On the same night, in 1982, Exit Art had a closing night party for its first exhibition, "Illegal America," which exhibited work by artists including Vito Acconci, Gordon Matta-Clark and Abbie Hoffman.

“A retrospective must be an introspective,” said artistic director Papa Colo. He was wearing a long black coat with a priest's collar and combat boots. He nodded and squinted his eyes as if in serious thought. “My version will be different. It’s a different version of love, and the one you love has a right of their own version. Maybe you can put thirty years in a sentence.” Then he looked back and smiled broadly. “If you are a good poet, you can put a whole life in a sentence,” he said and walked off.

The center of the large lofty Hell’s Kitchen gallery was filled with tables colored in bright cloths reserved for the Gunds, Tryps, and Dorns. There were large plentiful bars and tables to the left and right of canapés adorned with outsize flower arrangements of surreal faux blooms. By the stage at the back of the room was a large broken-down wedding cake by Will Cotton.

We grabbed a Ciroq on the Beach, a special cocktail, and surveyed the goods in the live auction including a Lichtenstein (valued at $20,000), a work by Julie Mehretu, an abstract work of drawn scrawls and colored tape (valued at $25,000, it sold for $35,000), and a purple silkscreen work by the Bruce High Quality Foundation (valued at $12,000).

“That’s a hot piece,” said a man, as Gallerist leaned in to get a closer look at a small bronze sculpture by Tom Otterness. It was a woman in a hat seemingly sprouting from some leaves. “Generic Otterness, but with Jeanette’s cap,” he said referring to the late co-founder of Exit Art. “It’s a portrait.” We looked closer, and indeed, the piece was titled For Jeannette (2012).

The silent auction in works by a variety of artists including drawings by Robert Wilson, a pair of photographs by Cindy Sherman, and a single-channel video of a woman doing a Jane Fonda workout—sped up. The Cindy Sherman, which was valued at $5,000 already had three bids.

“Jeanette was the heart of the place,” said Audrey Christensen, the associate director of Exit Art. “Her and Colo’s ideas and their process were at the heart of all the shows that Exit Art did over the years. So not having that dialogue, it changed. Papa Colo decided it was time to end the project. So we’re trying to end it in a nice way.” A woman dressed up as Barbara Bush in a blue dress and pearls stood by the table of canapes and snacked on a Kobe beef slider as Mr. Colo made the rounds.

“I was in conversation with Papa Colo and Jeanette when she was in the hospital,” said senior curator Rachel Gugelberger, who curated the retrospective. “And I was brought in to help. Of course, we expected [Ms. Ingberman] to make a full recovery. She took a turn for the worse."

While the 30-year retrospective had been in the works at that time, what they hadn't been planning for was the closing of Exit Art. "Then my role adapted to being responsible for the retrospective exhibition under very unusual circumstances,” said Ms. Gugelberger. Papa Colo returned. “It’s a fairwell. It’s a love story,” he said motioning around the room. “Very few places have that. Imagine you live with a man twenty-four-seven for thirty-two years." Asked what he would do now, he said he would continue on with theatrical productions, which he had begun to do at Exit Art.

"I'll invite you to see theater with six people at my place on Canal Street," he squinted and then smiled. "Now it's up to me. We'll have to see how good I am."

(Photo courtesy of the Nicholas Robinson gallery)

The Nicholas Robinson Gallery on West 20th Street recently closed its doors for the last time, Gallerist has learned. A small operation that, since 2007, has put on well reviewed shows from McDermott & McGough, Jason Polan, Ron Gorchov and John Copeland, it was ultimately overrun by the costs of doing business in Chelsea, according to former director Christine Højer.

"It's in response to very difficult economic conditions," she said. "It's a young gallery and we have a very big overhead, so it's too much of struggle, really." The reasons for the closure were almost self-explanatory, said Ms. Højer adding that she had nothing to do with the decision to close the gallery, and had already left by the time that decision was made. "It's not like we're closing because we've made $500 million and we don't need to work anymore."

The decision to close the gallery was made around Christmas, and artists were informed of those plans shortly after that.

Former employees there are are currently in the process of returning works to their artists. Ms. Højer said she could not speak about the future because she doesn't know what it holds for Mr. Robinson, or for herself.

The Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin. (Jensens/Flickr)

It's a moment of profound change in the Guggenheim museum empire. Helsinki, Finland, is weighing a plan to become home to a Guggenheim and work is moving forward on the moderately delayed Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. Now the museum and Deutsche Bank have announced that the Berlin branch they have run together for 14 years will close at the end of the year, according to Bloomberg.

Details are scant as to the reasoning for the decision. The partners released an e-mail announcing the news, noting that some 1.8 million visitors have visited the space. The statement also says that there are "concrete plans to put the relations between the two organizations on a new basis." Which could mean just about anything.

The mobile BMW Guggenheim Lab is set to visit Berlin in May, so the people there will at least have two Guggenheims for a short period. The Guggenheim also operates museums in Venice, here in New York and in Bilbao, Spain.

The inside of Moss. (martin.farrington/Flickr)

SoHo design store Moss, known for its bracingly white walls and shelves, and the exotic contemporary furniture it sells for substantial sums, announced that it will close its doors at 150 Green Street. Owners Murray Moss and Franklin Getchell told The New York Times that they had tired of running what felt like a "free museum." Sales had apparently dried up in recent years.

Messrs. Moss and Getchell said that they plan to inaugurate a smaller space sometime in the future and launch Moss Bureau, "a consultancy that will allow Mr. Moss to monetize his position as a design deity," according to The Times. (Thank you to Greg Allen for bringing this bit of text to our attention.)

If you're feeling dramatic, the closure could be interpreted as a sign that a chapter in the history of SoHo, the neighborhood once known as Hell's Hundred Acres, is coming to a close, with the design stores that came in as galleries moved to Chelsea being pushed out by corporate retail giants.

Disclosing his plans to close, Mr. Moss told a really great story to Blouin Artinfo about what happened after he approached Tupperware about the fact that they never held the famous Tupperware parties in Manhattan back in the mid 1990s:

"They allowed me to have a Tupperware party at Moss, and I did a dramatic installation of Tupperware. Looked fabulous. They bussed in, like, 18 killer Tupperware saleswomen. We served margaritas. And, excuse the '80s term, it was like the A-list. I had the editors from Vogue there. You know what the average sale was? Like $2,000! Do you know how much Tupperware you have to buy to spend $2,000?"

One final gala. (Exit Art)

Big changes on the New York alternative-space scene: Exit Art has announced via e-mail that it will close in 2012. Its co-founder, Jeanette Ingberman, died earlier this year, at the age of 59, of cancer.

Over its three-decade existence, the space became known for supporting emerging artists, particularly female and minority artists who were often overlooked by the mainstream art world, and for politically engaged group shows.

In the announcement, Exit Art, which started in SoHo and is now based in Hell's Kitchen, says that it is planning one final gala for March 6, 2012, to fund a variety of retrospective projects, including an exhibition and book, and "asking its longtime supporters for help in sending us out with a bang." The details in the e-mail, linked to by Artnet, are as follows:

"This Gala and Auction is being held to raise funds for Exit Art's "Legacy Project": a 30-year retrospective exhibition, the publication of a major book on the history of Exit Art, and a properly-funded transfer of the organization's complete archives to NYU Fales Library Downtown Collection. At Fales, scholars will be able to study Exit Art, its groundbreaking programs, and the thousands of artists who have shown here since 1982."

More information on the history of Exit Art is available in Ms. Ingberman's obituary.

Works by Heather Rowe in the gallery. (Photo courtesy of D'Amelio Terras)

Yesterday, the D'Amelio Terras gallery announced that it would soon shut its doors as partner Lucien Terras leaves to pursue other art world endeavors.

"This is a decision that we made together six months ago," said partner Christopher D'Amelio. "We waited to say anything about it because we had very strong fall shows that we didn't want to disrupt, along with Basel Miami."

The breakup has Mr. D'Amelio taking custody of the gallery's space at 525 West 22nd Street, along with most of its artists, though Mr. D'Amelio says that the roster may be pared down to a core group that has no other representation. A tighter selection of artists, he added, might also make room for new ones.

In all, Mr. D'Amelio said that he was excited for the opportunity to revitalize the gallery.

"I'm excited for both of us," he said. "We're both kind of excited, kind of scared the way you always are with a new opportunity."

The gallery has closed its doors for good, but this story is far from over.

More details as they arise.