London’s Stephen Friedman is the latest dealer to announce a new location in Tribeca, the New York neighbourhood quickly becoming the go-to destination for art spaces.
Set to open later this year, the space at 54 Franklin Street will be the first US location for the gallery, which opened in Mayfair, London in 1995. (In autumn, Stephen Friedman will also move its London location on Old Burlington Street—where it has remained since the gallery first opened—to a space just around the corner on Cork Street.)
The gallery's future Tribeca space features a Romanesque Revival façade, complete with the district's distinctive cast iron. The space dates back to 1891 and still has the original glass frontage, according to the gallery. The space was previously home to Postmasters, one of the earliest New York galleries to migrate from Chelsea to Tribeca; the gallery left the space last year following a dispute with its landlord and has since embraced a nomadic model.
Friedman says that while he “resisted” opening a US outpost for years, the gallery’s growth since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic made this year a good time to open a New York location. The gallery already has a substantial American collector base, Friedman says, and a handful of artists, particularly British artists, who had no representation in New York had asked Friedman if the gallery could “recreate our magic”, he says. And when it came to opening a space in New York, Friedman says he knew where it would have to be.
“I headed straight for Tribeca—it was always the area that I wanted to be in,” Friedman says, citing the neighbourhood's architecture, restaurants and proximity to dealing colleagues he’s known for decades.
The gallery has named Alissa Friedman (the two are not related) as the gallery’s senior director for New York. She’s worked in New York art galleries for three decades. The gallery plans to use the New York space as a launchpad to dive into the markets of other American cities, like Chicago, Friedman says. The gallery is hosting solo stands of artist Pam Glick at both the Independent and Frieze New York fairs this month.
Friedman isn’t alone—collector and dealer Lio Malca will open a new exhibition space on White Street this month, while Marian Goodman Gallery and Alexander Gray will open across the street from each other on Broadway in mid-2023 and early 2024, respectively. Timothy Taylor also relocated to Tribeca from Chelsea this year.