New York’s David Lewis Gallery Closes in TriBeCa

Art historian and critic David Lewis has announced that he is closing his eponymous gallery following eleven years in business and the presentation of eighty exhibitions. “I entered the gallery world as a wide-eyed academic, and, after over a decade of professional growth, it feels right to come full circle,” wrote Lewis in anInstagram post. “I’m bringing to a close this iteration of my gallery with a celebration of artists, creative communities, and innovative, even transgressive ideas. It has been the honor of a lifetime to work with such brilliant artists. It’s time now for a new chapter, which will further develop these collaborations and commitments.” The operation will shutter at the close of its current show, “Everyone Loves Picabia,” which pays tribute to the gallery’s roots in Lewis’s doctoral dissertation on French dadaist Francis Picabia.

Lewis opened his gallery in 2013 at 88 Eldridge Street on New York’s Lower East Side, remaining in operation there until decamping for his current TriBeCa address, 57 Walker Street, in 2021. Among the emerging and underappreciated artists he championed during the gallery’s run are Pictures Generation, Photoconceptualist Barbara Bloom, self-taught assemblage artist Thornton Dial, abstract painter Lucy Dodd, feminist printmaker Mary Beth Edelson, performance artist Dawn Kasper, realist painter Claire Lehmann, and abstract sculptor and painter Kyle Thurman.

David Lewis is the latest of a number of small and midsize contemporary art galleries to close in New York in recent months, including Helena Anrather, Queer Thoughts, JTT, and Foxy Production, all downtown. Farther uptown, the long-running Cheim & Read in Chelsea shuttered late last year. In the category of larger, long-running galleries Marlborough shocked many with the news that it would close this June, after nearly eight decades in business.