Gavin Brown's enterprise was an

art gallery An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The long ...

with venues in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

and

Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...

owned by Gavin Brown between 1994 and 2020. In 2020, it merged with Gladstone Gallery.

History

Broome Street

The gallery was established by Gavin Brown in 1994 on Broome Street, in the west

SoHo SoHo, short for "South of Houston Street, Houston Street", is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Since the 1970s, the neighborhood has been the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, art installations such as The Wall ...

neighborhood of New York City. In 1993, prior to opening the Broome Street location, Brown installed an exhibition of Elizabeth Peyton drawings in a room at the

Hotel Chelsea The Hotel Chelsea (also known as the Chelsea Hotel and the Chelsea) is a hotel at 222 West 23rd Street in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Built between 1883 and 1884, the hotel was designed by Philip Hubert in a styl ...

– considered one of the first shows to fall under the umbrella of “Gavin Brown’s enterprise.” The inaugural show at the Broome Street location was an exhibition by the British artist Steven Pippin. Pippin transformed the gallery space into a

camera obscura A camera obscura (; ) is the natural phenomenon in which the rays of light passing through a aperture, small hole into a dark space form an image where they strike a surface, resulting in an inverted (upside down) and reversed (left to right) ...

, and in doing so quickly established the unconventional meter that has since become a defining characteristic of the gallery's approach. Other early shows at GBE include a show of paintings by

Peter Doig Peter Doig ( ; born 17 April 1959) is a painter of Scottish nationality who has lived and worked between Trinidad, Canada, the USA, Germany and Britain. He settled in Trinidad with his family between 2002 and 2021, when he moved back to London. ...

, Catherine Opie photographs, and a two-person show of works by

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (;''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''"Warhol" born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director and producer. A leading figure in the pop art movement, Warhol ...

and

Rirkrit Tiravanija Rirkrit Tiravanija (, Jerry Saltz (May 7, 2007)Conspicuous Consumption''New York Magazine''.) is a Thai contemporary artist residing in New York City, Berlin, and Chiangmai, Thailand. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1961. His installatio ...

. The final show at the Broome Street location was a solo exhibition by James Angus.

Relocation to Meatpacking District

In 1997, Gavin Brown's enterprise moved to the

Meatpacking District The Meatpacking District is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan that runs from West 14th Street south to Gansevoort Street, and from the Hudson River east to Hudson Street. The Meatpacking Business Improvement District alo ...

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

. A few years later in 1999, Brown also opened a bar, Passerby, on West 15th Street next door to the gallery. Notably, the bar featured a fully operated disco floor, ''Untitled (Dance Floor)'', created by one of Gavin Brown's represented artists,

Piotr Uklański Piotr Uklański (born 1968) is a Polish-American contemporary artist, director and photographer who has produced art since the mid 1990s which have explored themes of spectacle, cliché, and tropes of modern art. Many of his pieces and projects ...

that was first created in 1996 at Gavin Brown's Broome Street Gallery. Exhibitions at the second gallery space included early works by the British painter

Chris Ofili Christopher Ofili, (born 10 October 1968) is a British painter who is best known for his paintings incorporating elephant dung. He was Turner Prize-winner and one of the Young British Artists. Since 2005, Ofili has been living and working in ...

, installations by

Martin Creed Martin Creed (born 21 October 1968) is a British artist, composer and performer. He won the Turner Prize in 2001 for exhibitions during the preceding year, with the jury praising his audacity for exhibiting a single installation, ''Work No. 22 ...

, the first show of work by Oliver Payne and Nick Relph, and in 2000, the first of artist Rob Pruitt's famed "

flea market A flea market (or swap meet) is a type of street market that provides space for vendors to sell previously owned (secondhand) goods. This type of market is often seasonal. However, in recent years there has been the development of 'formal' ...

s".

Relocation to West Village

In 2003, Brown moved the gallery to Greenwich Street in the

West Village The West Village is a neighborhood in the western section of the larger Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City. The West Village is bounded by the Hudson River to the west and 14th Street (Manhattan), 14th Street to ...

. The gallery continued to present atypical shows like “Drunk vs. Stoned” (an irreverent two-part exhibition that explored different states of intoxication and included a soccer match with opposing teams "drunk" and "stoned" and convivial openings). In 2007, the Swiss artist Urs Fischer produced his show ''You'' by digging a massive crater in the gallery's floor. In that same year, Rob Pruitt staged a second “flea market” at the

Frieze Art Fair Frieze Art Fair is an annual contemporary art, contemporary art festival, art fair first held in 2003 in London's Regent's Park. Developed by the founders of the contemporary art magazine ''Frieze (magazine), Frieze'', the fair has since expan ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

in the GBE booth. In 2008, at Tony Shafrazi Gallery, Gavin Brown and Urs Fischer co-curated ''Who’s Afraid of

Jasper Johns Jasper Johns (born May 15, 1930) is an American painter, sculptor, draftsman, and printmaker. Considered a central figure in the development of American postwar art, he has been variously associated with abstract expressionism, Neo-Dada, and ...

'' – a large group-show installed over a wall reproduction of Shafrazi's ''Four Friends'' exhibition. In November 2008, Jonathan Horowitz installed his exhibition ''Obama ‘08'' that focused closely on the pivotal

United States presidential election The election of the president of the United States, president and Vice President of the United States, vice president of the United States is an indirect election in which citizens of the United States who are Voter registration in the United ...

. In 2008, the Passerby location was closed. Gavin Brown's enterprise relocated to 620 Greenwich Street in New York City. From May 2010, the gallery also occupied the space that its neighbor, famed Manhattan meat purveyors, LaFreida Meats, once occupied. The inaugural exhibition at the expanded site was an exhibition of new work by Horowitz entitled, ''Go Vegan!''

Relocation to Harlem

In summer 2015, Gavin Brown's enterprise closed its Greenwich Street location and moved to a former brewery at 439 West 127th Street in

Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater ...

, with three floors of exhibition space.

Other locations

In 2015 Gavin Brown opened a gallery in

in a former chapel in Via de Vascellari. In 2007, Brown entered into talks to open a gallery in Los Angeles with L&M, the since-split New York gallery then run by collector and former banker Robert Mnuchin and former auction house specialist Dominique Lévy; these plans were eventually abandoned.Sarah Douglas (December 17, 2020)
In Making Gavin Brown a Partner, Barbara Gladstone Is Betting That You Can Get Big and Still Think Small
''

ARTnews ''ARTnews'' is an American art magazine, based in New York City. It covers visual arts from ancient to contemporary times. It is the oldest and most widely distributed art magazine in the world. ''ARTnews'' has a readership of 180,000 in 124 co ...

''.

Artists

Artists represented by Gavin Brown's enterprise included: *

Franz Ackermann Franz Ackermann (born 1963 in Neumarkt-Sankt Veit, Bavaria) is a German painter and installation artist based in Berlin. He makes cartoonish Abstract art, abstraction. Life He attended the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, Akademie der Bildenden K ...

* James Angus * Ed Atkins * Joe Bradley (2011–2015) * Kerstin Brätsch *

Jeremy Deller Jeremy Deller (born 30 March 1966) is an English people, English conceptual, video and installation artist. Much of Deller's work is Collaboration, collaborative; it has a strong political aspect, in the subjects dealt with and also the Idealiz ...

* Urs Fischer *

LaToya Ruby Frazier LaToya Ruby Frazier (born 1982) is an American artist. Early life From Braddock, Pennsylvania, Frazier began photographing her family and hometown at the age of 16, revising the Social documentary photography, social documentary traditional of ...

* Mark Handforth * Jonathan Horowitz * Arthur Jafa *

Joan Jonas Joan Jonas (born July 13, 1936) is an American visual artist and a pioneer of video and performance art, "a central figure in the performance art movement of the late 1960s".Alex Katz Alex Katz (born July 24, 1927) is an American figurative artist known for his paintings, sculptures, and printmaking, prints. Since 1951, Katz's work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions and nearly 500 group exhibitions through ...

(2011–2020) * Christopher Knowles * Mark Leckey * Bjarne Melgaard (2013-2020) * Laura Owens * Oliver Payne and Nick Relph * Elizabeth Peyton (1993-2014) * Rob Pruitt * Anselm Reyle * Rachel Rose * Steven Shearer * Avery Singer (2014–2019) * Frances Stark * Sturtevant *

(–2008)

Legacy

In 2024, Brown donated a range of materials related to the gallery to

Bard College Bard College is a private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The campus overlooks the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains within the Hudson River Historic District ...

’s Center for Curatorial Studies.Alex Greenberger (10 April 2024)
Dealer Gavin Brown Donates His Archive to Bard College’s Curatorial Studies Program
''

''.

References

External links

*
Art Review Power 100 City FIle: Gavin Brown Urs Fischer + Gavin Brown, Interview magazine, 2009
{{Authority control Art museums and galleries in Manhattan Art museums and galleries established in 1994 1994 establishments in New York City Contemporary art galleries in the United States Contemporary art galleries in Italy