New York's Marc Straus Gallery will open a new space in Tribeca next month at 57 Walker Street, joining around 85 other galleries in the area as the Manhattan art world’s mass migration to the trendy downtown neighborhood shows no sign of slowing.
For more than a decade since retiring as an onocologist, Straus has held exhibitions out of a converted four-storey renovated tenement building at 299 Grand Street in Chinatown. Straus’ father, a Jewish immigrant from Ukraine, opened a textile shop on Grand Street after he arrived in the US, and some properties on the street remain in the family. Now, Straus has set his sights on Tribeca, a hotspot for dealers looking for more space downtown. (The gallery will also continue to operate out of the Grand Street space.)
“Since opening in 2011, our gallery has matured greatly, to the point that our four floors on Grand Street are no longer enough space for our growing programme,” Straus tells The Art Newspaper in a statement. With more than 4,000 sq. ft, the Tribeca outpost will “give us far greater possibilities to support the work of our artists”, Straus adds, and will be used by the gallery to stage a “more experimental” programme of two-month-long solo exhibitions through 2025, allowing for a “deeper and more sustained engagement with the artists”, he says.
The new gallery will open on 14 November with a show dedicated to the textile sculptures of Malaysian artist Anne Samat. The space at 57 Walker Street was formerly home to David Lewis’s gallery, which shuttered earlier this year. Marc Straus’s new neighbours within a one-block radius will include Mendes Wood DM, Bortolami, Kaufmann Reppetto, James Fuentes, Grimm, James Cohan, David Zwirner's 52 Walker, Pace Gallery's 125 Newbury and, as of just last week, Marian Goodman Gallery.
