Pace African & Oceanic Art announced it would close this week after more than 50 years of selling artefacts from central and west Africa and the islands of the Pacific in New York.
“Thank you to our family, beloved friends, artists, clients and former staff who shared this journey with us,” the gallery wrote in a statement shared earlier this week on its Instagram account, which has since been deleted. “Our shared passion of African and Oceanic art motivated us every day and made the gallery a success.”
Pace African & Oceanic Art directed any provenance inquiries toward Carlo Bella, the gallery’s director, or Chantal Salomon-Lee, the associate director. Salomon-Lee told The Art Newspaper in a statement they had no comment about the closure of the gallery or their future plans.
The gallery is affiliated but not directly connected with Pace Gallery. For most of Pace African & Oceanic Art’s history, it was located at 32 East 57th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, but two years ago moved into a shared a space with Pace Prints on West 22nd Street in Chelsea
What prompted the gallery’s closure was the sale of Pace Editions, which owns both Pace African & Oceanic Art and Pace Prints, according to Artnews. The buyers chose to close the gallery, Bella told the publication.
“It is a pity that the new management has decided not to continue the business, but they are after a different goal—contemporary art,” Bella told Artnews. “New management does not realise the influence that African art or tribal art in general had in the shaping of Modernism and Modern art, the influence that they had on Picasso as well as on Basquiat, for example, but that’s their shortcoming.”
