Alumni-Owned Galleries Pivot to Succeed
Retail Spotlight
By Winnie McCroy
At a time when even large, blue-chip galleries representing established artists struggle, smaller galleries are remaining afloat by pivoting to nontraditional models—like pop-ups and strategic collaborations with organizations outside the art world. With ingenuity and risk-taking, these four alumni gallerists have managed to keep their doors open while others have shuttered.
“We work against the traditional tropes of the gallery experience: we say hello to everyone who walks in,” says Jennifer Rizzo, Art Market Studies MA, Visual Arts Management ’07, Fine Arts AAS ’04, partner at Hashimoto Contemporary, with locations in San Francisco and on New York City’s Lower East Side. Hashimoto has found success building longstanding relationships with contemporary artists who “know other good artists,” like Carlos Rodriguez, who premiered at Mexico City’s Zona Maco. This fall, he shows work “inspired by stories his father told on the long drive to grandmother’s house—traditional stories reimagined through a queer lens,” Rizzo says.
Husband-and-wife team Garrett Klein, Fine Arts ’08, and Ryan Massey opened their Lower East Side gallery in 2018 with extensive client lists, an impressive roster of emerging and established artists, and the mission to create collaborations between the two. Klein keeps his family business afloat in a landscape he says is “shifting and changing and can be so opaque” by being welcoming and transparent. “When a visitor comes in, I greet them, explain the show, and let them have a rich experience with the artwork. I’ve had a lot of first-time buyers because of that warmth and hospitality.”
After a year at her Chinatown location, Lin Tyrpien, Home Products Development ’12, switched to a pop-up business model, allowing for experimentation—like a holiday market this winter in collaboration with Tribeca’s lesbian-owned Isabel Sullivan Gallery. Tyrpien will serve sparkling drinks and provide insight about their home accents. Collaborations at other brick-and-mortar locations have proven more successful in their reach, revenue, and visitors; so much so that it “felt riskier to stay locked into a traditional mode,” Tyrpien says. She anticipates collabs for Art Basel Miami and a queer-coded Lyle Film Festival so the gallery can start “laying a foundation as a cultural brand and curatorial platform. If it makes sense to have a permanent space again, I will, but for the time being, I want to experiment.”
Initially launched as a pop-up art initiative in Rome in 2018, Visionary Projects is the brainchild of Haylee Barsky, Art Market Studies MA student, Art History and Museum Professions ’16, Photography AAS ’14, who says it’s “evolved in endless ways,” including a location on the Lower East Side that Barsky closed this year. She finds pop-ups more successful in engaging and exciting their cadre of young, first-time collectors. She also leans into collaborations. A Supper Series was a February 2024 one-off featuring dinner and an exhibition of works by Danielle Simone and Marco Villard, while multidisciplinary artist Cavier Coleman created paintings on-site for sale that evening. Keep an eye out on your commute for Visionary Projects’ NYC Subway Art Initiative—in which work from their artists is displayed on posters around the subway system—one of last year’s most successful endeavors.
