Lyles & King, Haven for Emerging Artists, Closes in New York’s Chinatown
6July 3, 2026
New York’sLyles & King, known for its championship of emerging artists and its keen eye for talent, has shuttered. The gallery had opened in a restaurant basement on the city’s Lower East Side in 2015 before moving to Chinatown in 2020, becoming one of the first of a wave of galleries to open there. Founder Isaac Lyles announced the closure in an email to its listserv.
“It is with profound gratitude and a tinge of sadness that I announce after eleven years and 118 exhibitions Lyles & King has closed. I founded Lyles & King in May 2015, with a belief in the importance of experiencing exhibitions in an all-too-mediated world. I believed then, as I believe now, in art’s capacity to engage us with our humanity: with our bodies, with one another, and with subjectivities outside our own. I feel we need this sense of connection today more than ever,” wrote Lyles.“The gallery’s achievements would not have happened without the artists, their visions, their risks, and their ambitions. I thank them deeply, along with the collectors, curators, fellow gallerists, writers, gallery visitors, and my family––you made the last eleven years possible and you made them meaningful.”
Among the artists the gallery represented were Aneta Grzeszykowska, Kathy Ruttenberg, Mira Schor, Jo-ey Tang & Thomas Fougeirol, and Lily Wong. It also hosted performances by artists including Lexi Brown and Puppies Puppies. Lyle & King’s last exhibitions, a solo show of Jessie Makinson and a three-person exhibition featuring Cato Ouyang, Fernanda Galvão, and Ren Light Pan, ended on June 20.
King provided no reason for the closure, but may have offered a clue in an interview he gave to The Observer last year, on the occasion of the gallery’s tenth anniversary. “I always want room for surprise and for something that challenges expectations,” he said. “I don’t want to repeat myself or chase a single aesthetic.”
Lyles & King joins numerous other galleries that have closed in New York in recent months as rents and costs rise and the art market continues to be roiled by changing collector habits and turbulent global politics, among other factors.