Mitchell-Innes & Nash, a gallery that represents artists such as Pope.L, Martha Rosler, and Jacolby Satterwhite, will close its Chelsea space and transition away from its current business model.
The gallery will now be “a project-based advisory space,” founders Lucy Mitchell-Innes and David Nash wrote in a letter sent on Friday evening that was obtained by ARTnews. “Moving forward we will be working within a new paradigm, consulting with select primary market artists and estates, providing art advisory services to individual collectors and foundations, and representing artworks on the primary and secondary markets,” the dealers wrote.
They founded their gallery 28 years ago, in 1996, on the Upper East Side, and they relocated the business to Chelsea in 2005. The married dealers, who both held high-ranking positions at Sotheby’s prior to launching Mitchell-Innes & Nash, teased a move to a new location in Manhattan, but they did not say where.
A wide range of artists have shown at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, from established giants like Roy Lichtenstein and Joseph Beuys to emerging talents like Satterwhite and Gideon Appah. Conceptual artists like Rosler, Pope.L, Mary Kelly, Monica Bonvicini, and the collective General Idea all found a home at the gallery alongside abstractionists such as Eddie Martinez, Keltie Ferris, and Gerasimos Floratos.
A spokesperson said that Mitchell-Innes & Nash confirmed that the gallery would no longer be open to the public and it would no longer host an exhibition program. Select artists and estates will continue to be represented by Mitchell-Innes & Nash, the spokesperson said, although it was not immediately clear which ones.
The gallery’s transition recalls that of another blue-chip Chelsea gallery Cheim & Read, which in 2018 became a “private practice” before shuttering permanently last year. The pivot is happening against the backdrop of a range of other gallery closures, many of them impacting smaller, less established businesses in Tribeca, the Lower East Side, and Chinatown.
“We have loved running our Chelsea space and welcoming in visitors from around the world,” Mitchell-Innes and Nash wrote in their letter. “It has made this journey all the more meaningful.”
