After nearly 17 years in business, San Francisco gallery Altman Siegel will wind down operations next month. Founder Claudia Altman-Siegel specifically cited the current art market as the reason for the gallery’s closure in an announcement released 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 decision to close 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 previously spent a decade working at Luhring Augustine Gallery, where she steadily climbed the ranks from security guard to co-director.
In downtown San Francisco, Altman Siegel carved out a reputation for showcasing work by early- and mid-career artists from the Bay Area and abroad, with a roster of artists including Shannon Ebner, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Trevor Paglen, Koak, Grant Mooney, and Zarouhie Abdalian. The gallery was known for its diverse programming that embraced new art forms as much as traditional mediums — a characteristic that local independent curator and writer Natasha Boas told Hyperallergic placed 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 said.
The gallery navigated expansions and moves over the course of its run. In 2016, it relocated from its first address in the city’s Financial District to the Dogpatch neighborhood, and opened a second exhibition space in Presidio Heights last year.
“Each chapter allowed the gallery to take risks, experiment, and keep pace with the evolving practices of our artists,” said Altman-Siegel. “Now, 213 exhibitions and art fairs later, the project is coming to a close.”
Tokyo-based painter Shinpei Kusanagi, who has shown with the gallery since it opened, will be the subject of its final show. Entitled It is not far to the sea, the exhibition opens tomorrow and is slated to run through November 15, one week before the gallery will officially cease operations.
“Altman Siegel Gallery will be keenly missed,” San Francisco-based art advisor Lizanne Suter told Hyperallergic. “Claudia and her excellent staff were completely devoted to the gallery’s artists and their practices.”
The news of Altman Siegel’s closure coincides with a growing number of gallery shutterings as part of a reported dip in the global art market. This year alone, the United States has witnessed a string of closures, including Blum in Los Angeles, Venus Over Manhattan in New York, and Clearing in both cities; earlier this month, Almine Rech announced that it would be vacating its 11-year-old exhibition space in London.
“It is unfortunate that a gallery of this caliber is closing its doors,” Jessica Silverman, founder of the namesake San Francisco gallery, told Hyperallergic. “Claudia will remain a dear friend, and I look forward to collaborating with her in new ways.”
