Philipp Kaiser has departed Marian Goodman Gallery, the place he’s president and one of many gallery’s 5 companions, after greater than six years. His final day on the gallery shall be on Might 2 and he’ll serve “as a curatorial guide to the Gallery, as wanted,” Marian Goodman Gallery confirmed to ARTnews in an announcement.
“Following the latest occasions in L.A., Philipp Kaiser has made the choice to depart the Gallery after greater than six years and return to impartial curatorial observe,” the gallery’s assertion continued, referring to the latest wildfires within the metropolis. “We’re grateful to Philipp for his imaginative and prescient and for his many contributions to the Gallery, which embody the profitable launches of our new areas in New York and LA.”
Kaiser joined the gallery in 2019 in a transfer that shocked many insiders within the artwork world. Kaiser had by no means labored at a industrial gallery earlier than. As a substitute, his background was within the museum world, having been a curator at each the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Basel and the Museum of Modern Artwork in Los Angeles after which briefly serving as director of Museum Ludwig in Cologne. After departing the Ludwig, Kaiser labored independently, curating the Swiss Pavilion on the 2017 Venice Biennale and several other exhibitions at LA’s Marciano Artwork Basis, based by blue-chip collectors Paul and Maurice Marciano.
His high-level place, first as chief government director of artists and packages, additionally meant that he had a significant position in plotting out the technique for the gallery when it comes to his exhibition program and its institutional relationships.
Then in 2021, Marian Goodman, the founder, introduced she would step away from every day operations of the gallery, entrusting it as an alternative to a partnership, led by Kaiser and rounded out by Rose Lord, Emily-Jane Kirwan, Leslie Nolen, and Junette Teng.
Because the leadership transition of the gallery to the companions, it has undergone vital adjustments, most notably its departure from its Midtown area on 57th Road to 385 Broadway in Tribeca, which opened final October. (Since its founding in 1977, the gallery had prevented following tendencies in gallery neighborhoods, staying on 57th as an alternative of heading to SoHo or Chelsea.)
Whereas the gallery has had a global presence, with an outpost in Paris since 1995 and a former one in London that closed in 2020, the gallery has been firmly a New York operation inside the US. That modified in September 2023 when it opened an LA branch, which was doubtless on account of Kaiser’s affect given his prominence within the metropolis’s artwork neighborhood.
And the gallery has additionally misplaced three main artists from its roster. In December 2022, Gerhard Richter, who had been with the gallery for greater than 30 years, left for David Zwirner. Nan Goldin decamped for Gagosian a couple of months later. And in March 2024, William Kentridge joined Hauser & Wirth.
