Philipp Kaiser has departed Marian Goodman Gallery, the place he’s president and one of many gallery’s 5 companions, after greater than six years. His final day on the gallery shall be on Could 2 and he’ll serve “as a curatorial guide to the Gallery, as wanted,” Marian Goodman Gallery confirmed to ARTnews in an announcement.
“Following the current occasions in L.A., Philipp Kaiser has made the choice to depart the Gallery after greater than six years and return to impartial curatorial observe,” the gallery’s assertion continued, referring to the current wildfires within the metropolis. “We’re grateful to Philipp for his imaginative and prescient and for his many contributions to the Gallery, which embody the profitable launches of our new areas in New York and LA.”
Kaiser joined the gallery in 2019 in a transfer that shocked many insiders within the artwork world. Kaiser had by no means labored at a industrial gallery earlier than. As an alternative, his background was within the museum world, having been a curator at each the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Basel and the Museum of Up to date Artwork in Los Angeles after which briefly serving as director of Museum Ludwig in Cologne. After departing the Ludwig, Kaiser labored independently, curating the Swiss Pavilion on the 2017 Venice Biennale and a number of other exhibitions at LA’s Marciano Artwork Basis, based by blue-chip collectors Paul and Maurice Marciano.
His high-level place, first as chief govt director of artists and applications, additionally meant that he had a significant function in plotting out the technique for the gallery by way of his exhibition program and its institutional relationships.
Then in 2021, Marian Goodman, the founder, introduced she would step away from every day operations of the gallery, entrusting it as a substitute to a partnership, led by Kaiser and rounded out by Rose Lord, Emily-Jane Kirwan, Leslie Nolen, and Junette Teng.
For the reason that leadership transition of the gallery to the companions, it has undergone important adjustments, most notably its departure from its Midtown area on 57th Road to 385 Broadway in Tribeca, which opened final October. (Since its founding in 1977, the gallery had averted following developments in gallery neighborhoods, staying on 57th as a substitute of heading to SoHo or Chelsea.)
Whereas the gallery has had a world presence, with an outpost in Paris since 1995 and a former one in London that closed in 2020, the gallery has been firmly a New York operation inside the US. That modified in September 2023 when it opened an LA branch, which was seemingly as a result of Kaiser’s affect given his prominence within the metropolis’s artwork group.
And the gallery has additionally misplaced three main artists from its roster. In December 2022, Gerhard Richter, who had been with the gallery for greater than 30 years, left for David Zwirner. Nan Goldin decamped for Gagosian a number of months later. And in March 2024, William Kentridge joined Hauser & Wirth.