Pace Gallery Rents Out Hanover Square Space as London Downsizing Deepens
Pace Gallery is giving up its 8,600-square-foot London space in Hanover Square, a move that signals a sharper contraction for one of the art market’s most visible mega-galleries. CEO Marc Glimcher said Wednesday that the gallery plans to move into a smaller, “less corporate” location, while keeping its seven physical galleries around the world and “retuning” them.
The decision arrives just days after Pace announced about 50 job cuts and the dropping of roughly 50 artists, a restructuring that has unsettled staff and prompted questions from artists who say they still do not know whether the changes affect them. The gallery’s London branch, which opened in fall 2021, had been presented as a major statement of intent: a two-level, high-ceilinged space renovated by Jamie Fobert Architects and launched with a performance by Brooklyn-based artist Torkwase Dyson. Jay-Z was reportedly in attendance.
At the time, the move placed Pace squarely alongside other large international galleries competing for visibility in London, including Gagosian and David Zwirner. Now, rumors suggest the gallery may relocate to a smaller site on Grafton Street, near David Zwirner and Sprüth Magers.
Glimcher has argued that the gallery system itself is in crisis, calling the current model “not only broken” and “unfixable,” and describing it as “a system that no longer works.” That position marks a notable shift from the town hall Pace held last week, where sources said he took a substantial share of the blame for the gallery’s managerial missteps.
The tension is hard to miss. Pace helped define the mega-gallery model it now criticizes, yet its latest restructuring has fallen most directly on artists and employees. For a gallery that once used scale as a form of power, the turn toward a smaller footprint may prove less like a reset than a test of how much of the old model can actually be preserved.
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