After almost 17 years in enterprise, San Francisco gallery Altman Siegel will wind down operations subsequent month. Founder Claudia Altman-Siegel particularly cited the present artwork market as the explanation for the gallery’s closure in an announcement launched yesterday, October 15.
“As it has become too difficult for a gallery this size to scale in this climate, I have made the incredibly tough decision to close rather than diminish either the space or the commitment to exhibit conceptually uncompromising work,” Altman-Siegel wrote, noting that the choice to shut the gallery on November 22 was made “with both pride and sadness.”
“[While] the art market can be relentless, the true heart of this project has always been ideas, community, and joy,” she added.
Altman-Siegel established her namesake gallery in 2009 following her relocation to the West Coast from New York. She had beforehand spent a decade working at Luhring Augustine Gallery, the place she steadily climbed the ranks from safety guard to co-director.
Set up view of Simon Denny’s Safety By means of Obscurity (2020) at Altman Siegel, San Francisco (picture by Robert Divers Herrick)
In downtown San Francisco, Altman Siegel carved out a status for showcasing work by early- and mid-career artists from the Bay Space and overseas, with a roster of artists together with Shannon Ebner, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Trevor Paglen, Koak, Grant Mooney, and Zarouhie Abdalian. The gallery was identified for its numerous programming that embraced new artwork kinds as a lot as conventional mediums — a attribute that native unbiased curator and author Natasha Boas informed Hyperallergic positioned the gallery “in the middle of the most pressing conversations coming out of the Bay Area.”
“Programs such as Altman-Siegel’s do not exist in our city, and perhaps may no longer exist in the art world writ large which is steeped in the transactional, and will be greatly missed,” Boas stated.
The gallery navigated expansions and strikes over the course of its run. In 2016, it relocated from its first tackle within the metropolis’s Monetary District to the Dogpatch neighborhood, and opened a second exhibition area in Presidio Heights final yr.
“Each chapter allowed the gallery to take risks, experiment, and keep pace with the evolving practices of our artists,” stated Altman-Siegel. “Now, 213 exhibitions and art fairs later, the project is coming to a close.”
Tokyo-based painter Shinpei Kusanagi, who has proven with the gallery because it opened, would be the topic of its last present. Entitled It isn’t far to the ocean, the exhibition opens tomorrow and is slated to run by November 15, one week earlier than the gallery will formally stop operations.
Set up view of Koak’s Letter to Myself (when the world is on hearth) (2023) at Altman Siegel, San Francisco (picture by Chris Grunder)
“Altman Siegel Gallery will be keenly missed,” San Francisco-based artwork advisor Lizanne Suter informed Hyperallergic. “Claudia and her excellent staff were completely devoted to the gallery’s artists and their practices.”
“It is unfortunate that a gallery of this caliber is closing its doors,” Jessica Silverman, founding father of the namesake San Francisco gallery, informed Hyperallergic. “Claudia will remain a dear friend, and I look forward to collaborating with her in new ways.”
