New York stalwart Cheim & Read will close its doors next month after 26 years in business, the gallery said in an email announcement on Tuesday night. Its current exhibition dedicated to artist Kathe Burkhart, which opened on November 9, will be the gallery’s final public exhibition, closing on December 23.
In its email, the gallery said, “Cheim & Read has had the privilege of working with an exceptional group of artists, mounting important exhibitions, and producing scholarly catalogues over the past twenty six years.”
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The gallery was founded in 1997 by John Cheim and Howard Read, who had previously been directors at the iconic Robert Miller Gallery. The duo quickly became known for mounting major exhibitions by artists like Louise Bourgeois, Lynda Benglis, Diane Arbus, Ron Gorchov, and Joan Mitchell, whose foundation departed the gallery in 2018 for David Zwirner.
Later same year, Cheim & Read announced that it would leave its longtime home of Chelsea for the Upper East Side and transition to “private practice, concentrating on the secondary market, sculpture commissions and special projects,” according to an email announcement it sent out. The new location would be helmed by Maria Bueno, a partner at the gallery. The Upper East Side space opened in September 2019 with a show dedicated to Gorchov.
But then in May 2021, Cheim & Read returned to its Chelsea space, with an exhibition of Matthew Wong, whose estate it had begun representing. Earlier this year, the gallery mounted a solo show of the self-taught artist who uses the moniker Cumwizard69420, whose “work reflects the chaotic topography of the internet, with subject matter that leans heavily on the scatalogical, the sexual, and the pop cultural,” as ARTnews reported.
Cheim & Read continued to mount shows in both Chelsea and the Upper East Side, though the latter space quietly closed at the end of a group show in July. During this month’s New York auctions, John Cheim also consigned several works from his personal collection, including Mitchell’s Sunflowers (1990–91), which sold for $27.9 million (with fees); the total value of works sold achieved $34.7 million (with fees).
Bueno will soon open a new fine art dealership, Bueno & Co., that will “focus on private sales of works by historical and contemporary masters” according to Tuesday’s email and exhibit work by Bourgeois, Benglis, Gorchov, Mitchell, and Wong, as well as Basquiat, Warhol, William Eggleston, Louise Fishman, Alice Neel, Pat Steir, and Sean Scully.