Vitrine, a gallery with locations in London and Basel, will close this month after 14 years in business, it announced today.
“The decision to end this chapter comes with sadness,” says Vitrine’s founding director, Alys Williams. “The challenges facing galleries today are well documented. Specifically the resources and staffing that are required to stay afloat and the growing expectations on mid-sized galleries to compete with much larger operations.”
While over the past three years Vitrine saw “significant growth in its business”, Williams says, especially after the opening of its Fitzrovia space in 2022, its overhead costs have risen dramatically during the same period. Shipping and storage costs for exhibitions in both London and Basel, and for international art fairs, increased “approximately six-fold in a period of around 12 months“, she adds, and the “administration costs for galleries are ever-increasing”.
“Growth in the business comes with numerous associated challenges—of risk, and of cashflow, and those risks (on behalf of the artists and Vitrine) were not, on balance and after careful consideration, ones I felt comfortable taking,” Williams says.
Williams also cites the arts funding crisis in the UK as a factor behind the closure. “This is a moment of political instability and the art world is far from immune to its effects. There are well-documented increases to the cost of living and people are being more careful about the purchases they make. The UK is certainly feeling the effects of Brexit and years of under-investment in the arts. This makes creating stability as a business, especially a small creative business with an entrepreneurial model, very challenging indeed.”
Vitrine operated three spaces, a two-storey main location in Fitzrovia, a smaller London space in Bermondsey and another smaller space in Basel. It announced the closure of its Basel gallery last month, around the time of Art Basel, which coincided with the end of its lease, Williams told The Art Newspaper at the time.
Vitrine represents 15 artists, including Tim Etchells and Nicole Bachmann. Its final shows (both until 13 July) are being held across its London spaces. In Bermondsey, Sarah Bedford is showing a 16m wall painting and in Fitzrovia, Charlie Godet Thomas is displaying a sound installation featuring aluminium basins collecting water gently dripping from a piping system.
Williams says she “remains committed to the founding principles of Vitrine, specifically around new models, entrepreneurship and experimental programming”. She adds that she will “continue to have open and transparent conversations with each [of the gallery’s] artists and plan to keep the channels open between my network into the future”.
