Author: Daphne Whitaker
San Francisco’s Rena Bransten Gallery, known for championing BIPOC and female artists since 1975, will close on November 22, along with its current Oliver Lee Jackson exhibition. The operation will shift its focus to remote programming and collaborative exhibitions at various venues. “The economics of running a brick and mortar gallery once supported by a steady flow of sales, institutional partnerships, and walk-in engagement has shifted, asking us to consider new models,” wrote gallery owners Rena and Trish Bransten in a press release. “As John Waters observed when told we were closing our space, ‘It is the end of an era.’”…
New York’s Deli Gallery, known for elevating cutting edge work by emerging artists, will close on September 28, according to a post on its Instagram account. Founded in Long Island City, Queens, in 2016 by Max Marshall, the operation moved to Brooklyn in 2018 before landing in its current TriBeCa home in 2021. The gallery had launched a Mexico City outpost in 2022. “It has been a privilege and an unbelievable gift to be able to realize so many incredible exhibitions and share our unique vision and voice with all of you,” wrote Marshall in the post. “The gallery was founded on a…
Clearing gallery, which launched in New York in 2011 and opened an outpost in Los Angeles in 2020, has announced its closure in both cities. The gallery was known for its unpretentious atmosphere and for bringing attention to cutting edge artists in the early stages of their careers, including Harold Ancart, Korakrit Arunanondchai, Huma Bhabha, Meriem Bennani, and Lili Reynaud-Dewar. News of its closure comes hot on the heels of announcements that New York galleries Venus Over Manhattan and Kasmin were shuttering, with Kasmin revealing its closure only two days prior. Clearing will mount no further exhibitions, with a Coco Young show that closed…
After more than six years, a mystery woman captured in a portrait that was acquired by the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in 2020 has been identified. The painting, which the museum acquired at auction at Sotheby’s, was signed J. Schul and dates back to the eighteenth century. It depicts a young Black woman, bedecked with pearls and holding an orange tree blossom. Via painstaking research by fashion historians, museum experts and the like, the AGO determined that the painting was by Jeremias Schultz, who painted it in 1775; the subject is Eleonora Susette, an enslaved mixed-race woman from Guyana her last name is still unknown. As…