Marian Goodman Gallery Just Announced a New Flagship in Downtown Manhattan

Influential New York art dealer Marian Goodman is set to join the vibrant Tribeca Gallery District after 47 years in Midtown. The gallery, previously on 57th Street, just announced its new flagship location in downtown Manhattan, scheduled to open on October 26. Marian Goodman Gallery’s new space will revitalize the Grosvenor Building, a historic five-story former warehouse on 385 Broadway, between White and Walker Streets, with new commissions and installations, activations, performances and video presentations by the artists from the gallery’s stellar roster.

The restoration project by StudioMDA will turn approximately 30,000 square feet of space into open galleries, viewing rooms, a library and archive, art storage and administrative offices. The new space will also give the gallery, which has a well-earned reputation for mounting museum-quality presentations and inspiring curators to bring those to other institutional spaces, a more dynamic street-level presence and an extensive platform in a neighborhood that has become one of the city’s most active art districts.

The inaugural exhibition will provide a cross-generational and cross-media overview of the artists the gallery represents, drawing aesthetic and conceptual connections between their practices and highlighting the very specific and coherent sensibilities that have shaped the gallery’s program over the past forty years. Artists with works in the show include Chantal Akerman, Giovanni Anselmo, Nairy Baghramian, Lothar Baumgarten, Dara Birnbaum, Christian Boltanski, Marcel Broodthaers, Maurizio Cattelan, Cerith Wyn Evans, Delcy Morelos, Sabine Moritz, Maria Nordman, Gabriel Orozco, Giulio Paolini, Giuseppe Penone, Edi Rama, Anri Sala, Tino Sehgal, Paul Sietsema, Robert Smithson, Ettore Spalletti, Tavares Strachan, Thomas Struth, Niele Toroni, Adrián Villar Rojas, Danh Vo, James Welling and Yang Fudong.

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Strategically planning for her legacy, Marian Goodman appointed Emily-Jane Kirwan, Rose Lord, Leslie Nolen, Junette Teng and Philipp Kaiser as partners in 2022 and established an advisory committee of five longtime staff members to support them. The opening of the Tribeca flagship is likely a reflection of Marian Goodman Gallery’s move into its next chapter under the partners’ leadership.

“Our new home will support an expanded program, serve a larger audience, and enable greater impact for our artists. We have long considered a possible move downtown, and the opportunity to move into this historic building in Tribeca, with its flexibility of space, its light and engagement with the life of the city, was a critical factor for the partners in advancing the Gallery’s global profile and presence,” said Kaiser in a statement. Lord added that the partners “are energized by this opportunity to build upon the community of artist-centric spaces in Tribeca, both the commercial and not-for-profit arts organizations and by the visibility that this new location will afford our artists and their work.”

Goodman, described by the New York Times as “art’s quiet matriarch,” has notably avoided expansion for expansion’s sake. She became one of the first American dealers with a French branch after opening a location in Paris in 1995. In 2014, the gallery opened an outpost in London but Goodman shuttered it in 2020, preferring to focus on the vibrant French capital as the gallery’s main European flagship in the uncertain post-Brexit UK market. In 2022, the gallery opened a 13,000-foot complex that includes gallery spaces, viewing rooms and a landscaped garden in Los Angeles.

Now 96 years old, Marian Goodman is arguably one of the most admired and respected art dealers in the world. She was also one of the first women dealers in the city, having founded her gallery in 1977, first in a space on East 57th Street and then at 24 West 57th Street, where Marian Goodman Gallery has been ever since. It quickly became one of the most influential galleries of Goodman’s generation thanks to her commitment to partnering with artists who were pushing the boundaries of what art should be. The talent on her roster gained widespread institutional recognition in the following years.

“Few galleries, either in Europe or America, have the degree of commitment to museums that she has,” Tate director Nicholas Serota, who has known Goodman since the ’70s, told the Times. The gallery’s program has always prioritized practices that could best fit a museum, or better, some of the most progressive Kunsthalle, more than a commercial gallery, a collector’s living room or an auction.” Indeed, collector Agnes Gund once said of Goodman: “I treat her gallery really as I treat a museum. I go to be educated, grasp ideas and see what she sees.”