Final week, supplier Tim Blum advised ARTnews that he was closing up store searching for a brand new mannequin for artwork dealing. “Everyone talks about desirous to step off,” Blum mentioned. “However nothing ever actually modifications.”
However Blum isn’t the one one getting out of the gallery enterprise.
On Wednesday, collector-turned-dealer Adam Lindemann mentioned that he can be closing Venus Over Manhattan, the New York gallery he based 14 years in the past. Going ahead, he’ll keep on with the customer facet of the dealer-collector relationship. The gallery’s present exhibition, a solo present for painter Susumu Kamijo, can be its final, scheduled to be on view till July 18.
Lindemann revealed the information in a considerably self-congratulatory opinion piece, printed by Artnet Information, that particulars the writer’s and the gallery’s historical past. His earlier writings—a 2006 e book on accumulating and a four-year stint as a columnist for the New York Observer—garnered him artwork world consideration, however “quickly after my writing turned widespread, I stop,” he writes.
His accumulating urge for food for trophy artwork, together with the acquisition record-breaking works by Jeff Koons and Jean-Michael Basquiat, finally led him to pivot to turning into an artwork supplier in 2012—in opposition to lots of his buddy’s recommendation.
“Opening a gallery as a collector actually does reach alienating either side,” Lindemann writes. “Sellers mistrust you, and most collectors don’t get what you’re as much as, so that they flip up their noses in disapproval—and even worse, they resent you for switching sides.”
He launched the gallery, opting in opposition to placing his title on the door and as an alternative calling it Venus Over Manhattan, a nod to the Wheeler Williams sculpture outdoors the gallery’s residence at 980 Madison Avenue. Quickly, the gallery was a magnet for each controversy and severe crucial consideration. The gallery turned recognized for bringing new consideration to artists like Jack Goldstein and H.C. Westermann, in addition to solos for blue-chip artists like Peter Saul, Alexander Calder, and a pre-banana Maurizio Cattelan. A notable off-site exhibition got here within the type of a guerrilla set up of William Copley in a Swiss chocolate store.
Along with the collector-dealer conundrum, Lindemann additionally added that the indignities of artwork honest politics have been a think about his resolution. With a touch of gossip, he intones, “Do you need to know the reality about honest committees? They gleefully ask you to get down in your palms and knees, wag your tail, and beg for forgiveness.”
Now, Lindemann is bowing out. “I’ve seen it from either side, and now it’s time to wave the white flag,” he writers. “There can be no pivot to consulting nor non-public dealing. I’m going again to air kisses, handshakes, fist bumps, facet hugs, head nods, winks, waves, large smiles, thumbs up, and good vibes. .”
