BLAIN|SOUTHERN TO OPEN NEW YORK BRANCH IN FORMER CHEIM & READ LOCATION
In May, British dealers Harry Blain and Graham Southern will open a third gallery at 547 West Twenty-Fifth Street in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan with an inaugural exhibition of new work by Malian artist Abdoulaye Konaté.
“We’ve been planning to open in NYC for some time but it takes time to find a space and location in line with what our purpose-built spaces in London and Berlin offer our artists,” Blain|Southern said in a statement. The announcement follows the appointment of Charles Saumarez Smith, the former chief executive of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, as the gallery’s senior director earlier this year.
The new space was designed by architect Richard Gluckman, whose firm, Gluckman Tang, was behind both of Gagosian’s Chelsea locations, Mary Boone’s uptown and Chelsea spaces, and Pace’s Beijing outpost. It is also the former home of Cheim & Read, which folded its public-facing gallery last June after twenty-one years when it became a “private practice, concentrating on the secondary market, sculpture commissions, and special projects.”
