MILLER BLOCK GALLERY, which opened in 1990, moved from 14 Newbury (lease was up) to Pepper's space at 38 Newbury in June. Ellen Miller is splitting from her long-time partner Katie Block and will run the gallery solo. John Colan moved his HALLSPACE gallery from Roxbury to 950 Dorchester Avenue. ARTANA, which primarily features traditional landscapes or expressionist paintings by New England artists, moved from Brookline to 355 Boylston Street, near the Public Garden, in October.
Boston's also attracted some new galleries of late, including CARROLL AND SONS, which former Toale gallery director Joseph Carroll launched in much of Toale's old space on Harrison. Ami Bennitt opened SPACE 242 on East Berkeley Street in January. And on Friday night, Stephanie Walker, former director of Newbury Street's Chase Gallery, debuted WALKER CONTEMPORARY gallery in Kayafas's old space and KHAKI GALLERY, a Wellesley gallery and frame shop, opened a branch at 460 Harrison. "This is where everything happens," Nahid Khaki says of the South End.
Next month, two more galleries are slated to open at 460 Harrison: GALERIA CUBANA, a branch of a Provincetown gallery specializing in contemporary Cuban art, and ANTHONY GREANEY gallery, a contemporary-art venue run by Greaney, who currently designs and installs exhibits at Harvard's Peabody Museum.
Other Boston galleries are contemplating switches, including KIDDER SMITH GALLERY on Newbury, which would like more space and may have to move because its building recently changed owners. JUDI ROTENBERG GALLERY, also on Newbury, has ambitions to expand.
That's a lot of action for one year, but has all the retrenching and reshuffling left the Boston art environment any more viable?
"I think it's a wash," says Barbara Krakow, long-time operator of the remarkably stationary BARBARA KRAKOW GALLERY on Newbury. "There's always attrition and there's always closings of young galleries."
FIRST FRIDAY CROWD II: Arlette Kayafas takes pride in First Fridays and the work on exhibit. |
Huge liability
Thanks to Wall Street, Newbury Street is in a batten-down-the-hatches mood. Galleries across the city talk of cutting back, doing less advertising, participating in fewer art fairs, cutting staff. Meanwhile, the pace of exhibitions at several galleries has slowed over the past couple of years from a new show each month to a six-week rotation. But excitement over the new look of the South End is muffling some economic concerns.
"The scene is still remarkably even-keeled," says Newbury Street's GALLERY NAGA co-director Arthur Dion, president of the Boston Art Dealers Association. "What passes for seismic here would be ordinary elsewhere. And I think the South End is a special situation whose economics allow spaces to flower readily, which not all are able to sustain. But I think the overriding characteristic of the scene is still remarkable stability. We're in the most difficult economic moment to forecast of our lifetimes, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the majority of the art businesses ride this one out, too. . . . 2007 was our best year ever [financially]. And we're not doing that in 2008," but, he assures me, the gallery remains in the black.
Venue to venue, business is mixed. Bernie Pucker of Newbury Street's 31-year-old PUCKER GALLERY says that his sales are chugging along. Steven Zevitas reports, "In the past four months, we have had our best quarter ever." Russell LaMontagne says his year-and-a-half-old LAMONTAGNE GALLERY in South Boston has seen sales slow in the past few weeks after a good summer and early fall.
