A Gallery Model Has Failed

Many of you know that my family gallery, known in the U.S. as Rosenberg & Stiebel, later Stiebel, Ltd., was founded around 1870 in Frankfurt, Germany. In 1939, when it became established in the U.S., it was run out of a one-bedroom apartment in New York and in 1944 moved to 32 East 57th Street. There were many galleries in the neighborhood, but in 1968 a contemporary gallery moved into “our” building.  I always teased the owner, Arne (pronounced Arnie) Glimcher, that we were there first😊. They were very nice and very generous in that when we celebrated our opening of a small contemporary section of our gallery, an artist represented by their gallery, Chuck Close, came to our opening luncheon.

Our venture (Stiebel Modern) into contemporary was brief, and as the years passed, the interest in European Old Master painting, drawings, and decorative arts also waned, and we closed our gallery in 2014. Meanwhile, the contemporary art field flourished, growing bigger and bigger all the time. Contemporary galleries added satellite galleries all over the world. Guess what? Nothing lasts forever, and that model also began to become shaky in the early 2020’s.

A few weeks ago, an article by Robin Pogrebin in the New York Times announced, “A challenging art market is forcing even an established player to contract.” The focus was on Arne Glimcher’s son Marc, who has been running Pace since 2010, saying that the current model for galleries (meaning contemporary ones) was not working anymore.

Pace was therefore cutting 50 artists from their roster (30% of their representation) and 50 people from staff (representing 20%). Continued expansions with less foot traffic and fewer mega sales were not supporting the outlay. For instance, Pace moved to their new flagship location in 2019 on West 25th Street in Chelsea. They had renovated the 8-story building at a cost of $100 million, which the developer shared, but they must also pay an annual rent of $9 million on a 20-year lease. They are not giving up that space but contracting in other ways. Those are sums that I can hardly comprehend and certainly not compare with my former gallery.

We read how the art market is crashing, but that is based on the figures we get from the mega sales at a couple of auction houses and what is released by the few galleries that are asked and respond to journalists. According to an analysis by Julien Delagrange, a Belgian artist and art critic as well as Director of CAI Magazine (contemporaryartissue.com), the number of purchases of art has actually increased in the last few years but not their total dollar value. Much like a bubble, for a number of reasons including Covid, high-end sales above $10 million have diminished.

Needless to say, Pace is not alone. After 30 years, Tim Blum of the Blum gallery permanently shut down his public spaces, which included galleries in Los Angeles and Tokyo in addition to New York. Blum also pointed out that there were systemic issues such as the relentless pace of continuous exhibitions and fairs. Going with your inventory from art fair to art fair is obviously exhausting, no matter how large the staff. Note that his giving up public spaces does not mean that he is giving up on the art business, as he will continue to work privately. I know that he is not alone and have heard this from others in the world of old art as well.

I have just scratched the surface, as I always do. If it is of interest, I encourage you to read more online to properly understand what is behind all the hype about the “demise” of the art world. If you enjoy art world gossip, you can gain access by going to the online art magazine Hyperallergic, where you will find an article from June 23 by Valentina Di Liscia and Rebecca Schiffman titled “Pace Gallery’s Hall of Mirrors,” which goes into what artists and employees have to say about Pace’s downsizing.