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 commitment to community to highlighting and advocating important voices so it is something I know will remain long after Deli shuts its doors.”
Among the artists whose work the gallery exhibited were New York based sculptor duo Ficus Interfaith, Haitian American interdisciplinary artist Abigail Lucien, Baltimore born installation and collage artist Devin N. Morris, and Brazilian sculptor Lila de Magalhaes. The operation’s last exhibition is a solo show of work by California-born painter Jose de Jesus Rodriguez, which will remain up through September 28.
In closing, Deli Gallery joins the steady stream of small and midsize contemporary art galleries in New York that have shuttered in the past year, including David Lewis, Simone Subal, Helena Anrather, Queer Thoughts, JTT, and Foxy Production, all downtown. Farther uptown, the long-running Cheim & Read in Chelsea announced its closure in late 2023. Larger galleries, too, have struggled with an art market changed by the Covid-19 crisis, inflation, and the rise of online sales: Long-running stalwart Marlborough closed in June after nearly eighty years in business.
“Obviously, there are external market factors at play,” Marshall told Artnet, “but at the end of the day this felt like the right moment.”
