Goodman Gallery trims staff, roster, and fair strategy as market pressure deepens
Goodman Gallery, one of Africa’s most influential contemporary art dealers, is reshaping its business as the art market’s slowdown continues to squeeze even established players. The Johannesburg gallery, founded in 1966 by Linda Givon during apartheid, is launching a new digital platform this week while reducing costs, narrowing its exhibition footprint, and leaning more heavily into advisory and secondary-market services.
Liza Essers, who has owned Goodman since 2008, said the move reflects a need to recalibrate after years of volatility. “We needed to put the brakes on, regroup, take a breather,” she said. “It’s about getting aligned with the market shifts.”
The restructuring comes as Goodman prepares for Art Basel, where it will present major works by El Anatsui (b. 1944), Kapwani Kiwanga (b. 1978), and Yinka Shonibare (b. 1962). Among the works on view will be a monumental wooden relief by Anatsui, a beaded textile piece by Kiwanga, and a life-size fiberglass sculpture of a horse and rider in Dutch wax cotton by Shonibare, priced at £500,000 ($670,000).
The gallery’s filings in the United Kingdom show the scale of the pressure. Between 2023 and 2025, revenue rose from £28.5 million to £35.3 million, but profit fell sharply in 2024, dropping 58 percent to £2.1 million. During that same period, Goodman added 20 artists and opened a project space in New York, a reminder that growth in the current market has become more expensive to sustain.
Essers said the gallery’s recent retrenchment included staff layoffs, a reduction of nearly a third of its roster, and the decision not to participate in Art Basel Miami Beach in December for the first time. It also cut back on fairs including Frieze London, Singapore, Miami Basel, and FOG after concluding they were no longer working for the business.
The new digital platform is intended to broaden Goodman’s reach beyond the traditional gallery model. It will include original content, e-commerce, advisory services, and a secondary-market arm. The gallery’s advisory business already counts Barloworld and a New York wealth management company among its first clients.
Goodman is also reducing exhibition square footage in Cape Town and Johannesburg to create private rooms for advisory and secondary sales. The shift reflects a wider recalibration across the gallery sector, where Pace, Templon, and Dépendance have all recently made their own cuts or closures. For Goodman, the question is no longer how large a gallery can become, but how resilient it can be.
