Marian Goodman Gallery President and Partner Philipp Kaiser Departs
158April 29, 2025
Swiss art historian, critic, and curatorPhilipp Kaiser, the president and one of five partners atMarian Goodman Gallery, will exit both roles there on May 2,Artnewsreports. Kaiserjoinedthe gallery in 2019 as its inaugural chief executive director of artists and programs, in which capacity he managed programming and strategy for all three of the gallery’s international locations, in New York, Paris, and London (the London outpost shuttered in 2020). He was namedpresident and partnerin 2021 as part of Goodman’s succession plan, as the founder stepped away from day-to-day operations.
Under Kaiser’s leadership, the gallery launched an outpost in Los Angeles in 2023 and last year moved its New York branch from Fifty-Seventh Street, its home since Marian Goodman’s 1977 founding, to the newly hot art hub of TriBeCa. His tenure also saw the departure of several blue-chip artists: Gerhard Richter, who left for David Zwirner in 2022 after more than three decades with Marian Goodman; Nan Goldin, who joined Gagosian in 2023; and William Kentridge, who was snapped up by Hauser & Wirth in 2024.
Kaiser had been an unusual choice to lead the commercial gallery, as he was a force in the museum world, having served as director of Cologne’s Museum Ludwig. Prior roles included high-level curatorial positions at the Kunstmuseum Basel and at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. In 2017, he curated the Swiss pavilion at the Fifty-Seventh Venice Biennale. Kaiser will remain as a curatorial consultant to the gallery on an as-needed basis. “Following the recent events in LA, Philipp Kaiser has made the decision to leave the gallery after more than six years and return to independent curatorial practice,” said the gallery in a statement. “We are grateful to Philipp for his vision and for his many contributions to the Gallery, which include the successful launches of our new spaces in New York and LA.” No word has yet been issued regarding his successor.