Former Nadine Johnson PR guy Amani Olu said in an e-mail yesterday that he has split with his business partner Elizabeth Denny, with whom he had intended to start a gallery named Denny Olu later this year. We first learned of Mr. Olu’s departure from Nadine Johnson, and his gallery plans, last week. Read More
We stopped by our columnist Adam Lindemann’s new gallery yesterday while he was installing his first exhibition called “À Rebours,” an attempt to sort of reimagine the world of the Duke Des Esseintes from the famous 19th-century Huysmans novel of the same name, using pieces by Redon and Moreau (the fictional duke’s favorites) as well as contemporary art and a hodgepodge of other things. (n.b.: This is not a review. We stopped by. We checked it out. We edit Adam Lindemann; we don’t always agree with him.)
The gallery is on the third floor of 980 Madison. On our way up, the elevator doors opened briefly on the second floor to reveal signage for something called the Exhale day spa. We almost got out there, reader, we almost got out there. Read More
At 8:20 p.m. last night, artist Maurizio Cattelan was standing in line for a rum drink by the make-shift bar at Anna Kustera Gallery in Chelsea to which his own tiny storefront gallery, Family Business, is annexed. There was a pile of magazines next to him with bright blue covers, as it was the Vice magazine issue release party for the Holy Trinity Issue and Mr. Cattelan had designed the front cover, which features a picture of three objects—a stapler, a red plunger and a dildo, the last of which was covered with a black sticker that had the word “dildo” printed on it. We made to say hello to the skinny Italian artist as he left the bar, but the artist, who was wearing a dark sport jacket, black skinny jeans and modish white leather sneakers, was intercepted by a tall blonde woman. Around him in the small bright space, was a group exhibition mostly of photographic work. The crowd was dressed casually and seemed barely out of college. Read More
The ground floor of the former Fine Arts Building in Tribeca, birthplace of the New Museum in 1977, is now a branch of Asian-fusion restaurant Nobu. Read More
As far as gallery names go, it’s hard to think of any as wonderfully bizarre as the one debuting in Chelsea tonight: Shoot the Lobster.
“It’s from a Clash song,” curator Mary Grace Wright, who’s heading the project, explained. (Sure enough, the band’s 1981 single “Magnificent Seven” contains these lines: “Italian mobster shoots a lobster / Seafood restaurant gets out of hand.”) Read More
The SoHo alternative gallery Artists Space is marking its 40th anniversary this year, and today announced a bevy of activities that it has planned for the rest of 2012. Perhaps most exciting: its second location, in TriBeCa, Artists Space: Books & Talks, which we wrote about back in February, will open on March 31. Read More
Chelsea gallerist Sean Kelly has added a whopping six artists over the past 18 months, including big names like Kehinde Wiley, Alec Soth and Terence Koh. To show his burgeoning roster, he’s moving in the fall to a two-story, 22,000-square-foot gallery at 36th Street and 10th Avenue, the current home of nonprofit Exit Art, which is closing after 30 years. It’s three times larger than Mr. Kelly’s current space. “The minute we saw it we knew it was the right one,” Mr. Kelly told The Observer. He’d been looking for a year. Read More
A decade ago, Soho watched as one by one its galleries and arts institutions left and were replaced by boutiques, bistros and condos. How ironic that the Drawing Center, one of the neighborhood’s oldest and most venerable institutions, should reverse the trend.
In December 2010, the 35-year-old gallery paid $2.4 million for a loft on the second floor of its long-time home at 35 Wooster Street. The purchase provided the space necessary to facilitate a consolidation and reorganization of its facilities at 35 Wooster, ensuring the gallery’s future in Soho.
“We decided to stay, that we have this asset, let‘s build on what we have,” Brett
Littman, executive director of the Drawing Center said during a recent tour, referring not only to his building but the still thriving if somewhat stultified neighborhood surrounding it. “We settled on a gradual, incremental growth, one we can actually sustain.”
Mr. Littman said he hoped the project, known as ReDraw, could even serve as a model for other institutions, the recent demise of the American Folk Art Museum still fresh in so many nonprofits’ minds. He even said it was possible for the Drawing Center to slowly colonize the building, buying up condos as they become available. Read More
On a Friday last month, Marc Straus was sitting in the office of a new gallery on the Lower East Side, recalling the decades that he spent working as an oncologist, and the optimism he felt for the students he taught in the field.
“I thought, damn, if I train you, you’re going to go out and be a rigorous son of a bitch,” Mr. Straus said. “You’re going to keep reading your whole career, and you’re not going to be lazy.” That sounds like tough talk, but the mostly retired doctor—he sees patients on occasion—was speaking calmly and happily, and he was grinning. Read More
