Don’t call it a comeback, but New York dealer Jeffrey Deitch has announced plans to open a 15,000-sq.-ft gallery in Hollywood this autumn, not far from the Highland Avenue nucleus that includes Regen Projects, Kohn Gallery, and Hannah Hoffman Gallery.
In a keynote address at the Appraisers Association of America’s annual luncheon in April, where he was presented with the association’s award for excellence in the arts, Deitch spoke of the SoHo gallery scene that drew him into the art world, now greatly expanded but also dispersed. “I do think something is lost without that concentration,” he said. Hoping to establish a kind of art hub, he is leasing a warehouse on North Orange Drive that is part of a development by CIM Group that will feature cultural amenities.
If Deitch’s populist leanings made his tenure as director at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art from 2010 to 2013 rocky, the experience also showed him “how many people want to engage in art who don’t have easy access”, he said. “I loved connecting with that audience and I would like to connect with that again with the gallery in Los Angeles.”