LIGHTS OUT FOR NEW YORK’S DENNY GALLERY
New York’s Denny Gallery has announced that it will shutter after a decade in operation, becoming the fourth gallery in the city’s TriBeCa art hub to close in the past few months. Well-regarded galleries JTT, Foxy Production, and Queer Thoughts have all given up the ghost in recent weeks, citing reasons ranging from financial disputes with landlords to long-term business plans. All are in the midsize range, and all were known for showing experimental art by emerging artists. Among the artists on Denny’s roster were Jeremy Couillard, Michael Mandiberg, and Pamela Council. The gallery additionally exhibited shows by Amir H. Fallah, Clarity Haynes, Wendy White, and Kennedy Yanko.
“Denny Gallery will close its doors on October 7th, 2023 after over a hundred exhibitions, three gallery spaces, two continents and ten years in business,” wrote the gallery in an announcement. “The gallery’s recent milestones presented an opportunity to reflect on the accomplishments of the past decade and consider actively and openly what we would like to focus on for the next ten. After heartfelt consideration we feel that it requires a shift.”
The gallery was founded by Elizabeth Denny in 2013 on the city’s Lower East Side, with Rob Dimin coming aboard as a partner two years later. After moving shop to TriBeCa in 2019 and opening a branch in Hong Kong, the pair dissolved their partnership late in 2022, with Dimin pointing to differences in opinion regarding programming, business planning, and participation in art fairs as behind the split. “Our program was very institutionally friendly,” he told Artnet News this past summer, “but that doesn’t always translate into market-friendly. I don’t want to sound like I’m just commercial, but if you want to have these really ambitious institutionally focused projects, one needs to be conscious of the market and the system around you, especially at our scale . . . not huge, but also not small.” Dimin earlier this year launched his own eponymous gallery, also in TriBeCa.
