2008-03-16

Museums, Galleries & Auction Houses: The New Art World Blur

Over the past couple of years museums have been subject to growing criticism of their increasingly commercial stance. A related trend, the contours of which are only now becoming apparent, concerns the shift in the behavior of commercial galleries and auction houses, which are becoming decidedly more museum-like.

One manifestation of what the Financial Times recently described, in an article on auctioneer, dealer and art fund manager Simon de Pury, as the blur of the new art world1 is the gallery building boom. The super-galleries are super-sizing, and, as with countless museums around the world, are using architecture to signal their power and brand. This new species of mega-gallery, as the New York Sun has called it,2 is monumental, pristine, and shrine-like, a league apart from the standard Chelsea or Bond Street digs and a far cry from the funky, scrappy little spaces of the 1980s East Village. The recent gallery building-boom in New York and London is impressive. In London, trendy Hauser & Wirth has added two spaces this year alone. Larry Gagosian has opened two spaces in two yearsa 12,900 sq ft space near Kings Cross and a smaller West End space. Not to be outdone, Jay Joplings new 12,500 sq ft White Cube gallery cost $20 million. Described as a little Whitney Museum, Jopling himself admits the new space was intended to be more of an institution.

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by Elizabeth Casale, AEA Consulting, e-Magazine Platform, February 2007