Rena Bransten, an art dealer whose gallery was a fixture of the San Francisco art scene for over 50 years, died Wednesday at the age of 92. Bransten died following a fall after a recent heart attack, her daughter, Trish, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
Bransten’s eponymous gallery was founded in 1975 as the successor gallery to Quay Ceramics, which Bransten and Ruth Braunstein launched the year prior. Originally located in a 3,400-square-foot space in Union Square, the gallery became known for elevating artists from California, with a particular emphasis on women artists and artists of color.
Among the most high-profile artists represented by Bransten over the years include filmmaker John Waters, photographer Dawoud Bey, conceptual artist Fred Wilson, poet and artist Lawrence Ferlinghetti, painter Hung Liu, and multidiscplinary artist Lava Thomas.
The gallery was forced out of its long-time space in 2015, when a tech company offered triple the rent, according to San Francisco Standard. It moved first to Market Street before settling in the Dogpatch in 2016, along with many other galleries.
In November, the gallery announced that it would be leaving its Dogpatch space and that it would adopt “a nomadic model” due to declining sales and foot traffic, as Trish, a director at the gallery, told the Standard. She added that the gallery would present exhibitions in temporary venues around San Francisco.
“The economics of running a brick-and-mortar gallery—once supported by a steady flow of sales, institutional partnerships, and walk-in engagement—has shifted, asking us to consider new models,” wrote Rena and Trish Bransten in a press release at the time. “As John Waters observed when told we were closing our space, ‘It is the end of an era.’”
Rena Bransten was born Rena May Glazier on March 8, 1933 in New York City. Her father, William Glazier, was a partner in Lehman Brothers and served as a trustee at the Morgan Library & Museum. She attended the Dalton School, a prestigious private school in Manhattan, and earned a bachelor’s degree in art history from Smith College in 1954. That same year, she married John Bransten, who worked for his family’s coffee company M.J. Brandenstein & Co., and the couple moved to San Francisco, where John was from, after spending a year in Japan, while he was stationed with the US Army during the Korean War.
Initially, Rena participated in the art world on the philanthropic side, sitting on the boards of the Oakland Museum of California and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She and John divorced in 1969, though they remained friends until his death in 2001.
Waters, who is best known as a filmmaker, told the San Francisco Chronicle that Bransten was a “huge help” to his career as a visual artist and that she was “not impressed by celebrity at all.”
“She was such a legend—and not only in the Bay Area art world, but nationally,” Waters said. “She was a classy act and a great art dealer ahead of her time.”
Bransten is survived by her three children: Peter, a partner at the law firm Glaser Weil, Trish, who worked at the gallery since 1983, and David, who is a social services learning and development professional., along with her five grandchildren, Rena Gallagher, Sam Gallagher, Kailey Jensen, Arielle Bransten and Cecile Bransten, and great grandchild Melody Bransten Black Elk.
