COURTESY GLADSTONE GALLERY
As Artists Space continues renovations on its new location at 80 White Street in New York’s Tribeca neighborhood, ahead of an expected spring 2019 opening, the 45-year-old downtown nonprofit gallery has seen two new developments. Veteran gallerist Barbara Gladstone recently joined the board, and Heather Harmon has been appointed as development director.
Gladstone has operated her eponymous New York gallery for nearly 40 years. Harmon previously worked as a longtime director of Regen Projects gallery in Los Angeles. (As it so happens, Gladstone Gallery and Regen Projects have a connection—the latter’s proprietor, Shaun Caley Regen, is Gladstone’s daughter-in-law; Stuart Regen passed away in 1998.) Harmon went on to become a director for the art adviser Kimberly Chang Mathieu, who helped oversee Guy Laliberté’s collection in Ibiza, Spain.
Artists Space executive director and chief curator Jay Sanders said of Gladstone joining the board, “2018 will be a big year building up to [moving into] the new building. Barbara comes at the perfect time. Her skill set and expertise in building careers and working with artists is so apropos to some of the things we are doing right now. She has immediately been incredibly helpful.”
Sanders, who joined Artists Space last year, said that Harmon will help the organization innovate in its approach to fundraising. “It’s a bit like a reset—a shoring up of the organization in a different way,” he said. “We are both new enough that we feel committed to that together.”
Harmon said, “We are both thinking about different models for the future of how we can approach more adventurous thinking in terms of fundraising.” She said she is interested in, among other approaches, “activating strong bonds with artists’ foundations.” She is looking forward to a series of programming in the summer that will be centered around art spaces in Tribeca, from La Monte Young’s Dream House to commercial galleries like Bortolami.
Last May, a month after Sanders joined as executive director and chief curator, Artists Space announced that its new location will be an 8,000-square-foot, two-level space at 80 White Street. That new space is currently under renovation, and Sanders said the gallery plans to open in spring 2019. Artists Space moved out of its longtime home on Greene Street in SoHo in 2016 and is currently operating out of a second space—a bookstore and events venue—that it opened in 2012 at 55 Walker Street.