A beacon of Australia’s contemporary art world, the Anna Schwartz Gallery in Melbourne, will close this December after four decades in business, the gallery announced this week. It will be replaced next year by a new entity, Anna Schwartz Projects.
Schwartz’s stable of artists has included Shaun Gladwell, Angelica Mesiti and Marco Fusinato, who represented Australia at the Venice Biennale in 2009, 2019 and 2022 respectively. Other artists in the Schwartz stable have included Chiharu Shiota, Jenny Watson, Callum Morton, Kathy Temin, Daniel Crooks, Warwick Thornton and Justene Williams.
In a statement, Schwartz said she will “continue to assist artists with advice and visibility, collaborating with other galleries and institutions in supporting their practices”. “Anna Schwartz Projects will present an occasional and dynamic roster of conversations, projects and exhibitions across forms including installation, performance, publishing and music,” the statement continued.
“It will build on the gallery’s uncompromising conceptual position and contribution to culture. It will embrace experimental approaches to art practice, but with a program that is entirely project and event based offering a particular experience.”
The decision to change the focus of the gallery was, according to the statement, driven by Schwartz’s appetite to revitalise the current structure in response to the changing landscape in Australia’s art scene. “Engagement with design and craft has proliferated and occupies much of the attention previously devoted to protagonistic visual, installation and performance art,” the statement said.
“There is, though, a very welcome mushrooming of artist-run initiatives which appropriately represent the new generations of artists. In their ingenious spaces: garages and found office spaces, a new culture of image and object making is developing.”
"The culture and commerce of collecting has also changed. The model of deep collecting by individuals, private and public museums made a very important contribution to the lives and culture of artists and their representing galleries, but this has taken new shape,” Schwartz said.
Schwartz’s first experience in art galleries was in 1982 at the artist-run project, United Artists. In 1986 she opened City Gallery in Flinders Lane, Melbourne. Architecturally renovated, it reopened as Anna Schwartz Gallery in 1993.
As well as the Melbourne gallery, Anna Schwartz Gallery Carriageworks in Sydney operated for 14 years. During this phase, Schwartz invited independent curators and international artists to work with her. They included Antony Gormley, Joseph Kosuth, AES+F, Yinka Shonibare, Yin Xiuzhen, John Stezaker, Candice Breitz, Francesco Clemente, Daniel Buren, Katarina Grosse and El Anatsui.
Anna Schwartz Projects will occupy level one of Schwartz’s existing premises in Flinders Lane.
