David Zwirner has closed its Upper East Side gallery, ending nearly a decade at the townhouse at 34 East 69th Street as the blue-chip dealer continues to concentrate its New York operations downtown.
A spokesperson for the gallery told ARTNews that the move had been planned for a while. “It was always our plan to leave the Upper East Side once the last phase of our Chelsea overhaul was complete,” the spokesperson said in an email. “With our Selldorf-designed space at 525 West 19th Street now reopened with our current exhibition, In Solidarity, that moment has arrived — and we’re sad to leave the Upper East Side. We’re looking forward to our fall exhibition program on 19th Street, 20th Street, and in Tribeca.”
The gallery first opened the East 69th Street location in 2017, occupying the first three floors of the townhouse. Over the years, it hosted roughly three dozen exhibitions, including presentations by Yayoi Kusama, Dan Flavin, Bill Traylor, Sherrie Levine, Marcel Dzama, and more recently the group exhibition Set in Stone, organized with the Paris gallery Galerie Kugel, which closed on June 26.
The closure comes after the completion of David Zwirner’s renovated Chelsea campus, anchored by Annabelle Selldorf’s redesign of 525 West 19th Street. Which opened March last year. The gallery now operates a cluster of interconnected spaces on West 19th Street, another exhibition space on West 20th Street, and its Tribeca gallery at 52 Walker Street, in addition to locations in Los Angeles, London, Paris, and Hong Kong.
The departure is the latest change for the Upper East Side’s gallery corridor. Neighboring mega-gallery Hauser & Wirth vacated its East 69th Street townhouse last year before selling the property, while Brazilian gallery Nara Roesler left the block in 2020.
Even so, the neighborhood remains an important destination for collectors, with dealers including Gagosian, White Cube, Skarstedt, Lévy Gorvy Dayan, Gladstone, Almine Rech, and Sprüth Magers maintaining Upper East Side locations. Add to that Sotheby’s new home at the Breuer Building, and you have a thriving arts hub, with or without Zwirner.
The news of the closure was first reported by Artnet News.
