Larry Gagosian on Two Gallery Missteps: “Nobody Showed Up” in San Francisco
Larry Gagosian, the famously media-shy mega-dealer behind Gagosian, has offered an unusually candid look at two expansions he now describes as outright failures, as the gallery prepares to open a new New York location at 980 Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side this spring.
In a recent interview tied to the forthcoming Madison Avenue space, Gagosian reflected on the gallery’s short-lived San Francisco outpost, which opened in 2016 near the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and closed in 2021. At the time of the closure, a spokesperson characterized the decision as a strategic move to “consolidate and strengthen Gagosian’s presence in California.” Gagosian’s own assessment, however, was far less diplomatic.
“It just failed,” he said. “I mean, nobody showed up. It was so depressing. I’d fly up there for an opening, and there’s nobody there. I’d go, What the f— am I doing here?”
The remark lands amid a broader recalibration in the Bay Area’s commercial art ecosystem, which has struggled to sustain blue-chip gallery footprints despite the region’s concentration of wealth. The area is home to numerous major collectors, including Laurene Powell Jobs, venture capitalist Marc Andreesen and Laura Arillaga-Andreesen, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, former Gap Inc. chairman Robert Fisher, and collectors Komal Shah and Gaurav Garg.
Yet the market’s volatility has been difficult to ignore. Pace mounted its own Bay Area experiment, opening in Palo Alto in 2014, relocating to a smaller space in 2018, and closing in 2022. More recently, San Francisco dealer Altman Siegel announced last October that it would shutter after 16 years, citing the challenges of operating in the current market. That same month, Rena Bransten Gallery said it would close its Dogpatch space and shift to a “nomadic model” in response to declining sales and rising rent. Bransten died at 92 in February.
The contraction has not been limited to commercial galleries. Art nonprofit Kadist also announced last year that it was closing.
Even so, the Bay Area is not without new bets. Hauser & Wirth is slated to open in Palo Alto this year, taking a 2,600-square-foot space at 201-225 Hamilton Avenue, a short walk from Stanford University.
Gagosian also pointed to a second expansion he considers a mistake: the gallery’s Geneva location. The space opened in 2010 and last held an exhibition in 2020. It has since closed.
“I didn’t fully get the Swiss,” he said.
Taken together, the comments offer a rare glimpse into the risk calculus behind global gallery growth, and the reality that even the most powerful dealers can misread local audiences. As Gagosian adds another address to its New York roster, the dealer’s blunt postmortems underscore a quieter truth of the art market: prestige travels, but it does not always translate.
