Richard Saltoun Gallery is opening a new gallery space in New York’s Upper East Side on May 2.
The new location at 19 E. 66th Street will be the third for the eponymous London-based post-war and contemporary art gallery, which was founded in 2012. It opened a second space in Rome’s Via Margutta in 2022.
The inaugural show at the New York location will be a showcase of African Canadian mixed-media artist Jan Wade in her first-ever solo show in the United States. It will precede the retrospective exhibition Soul Power at the Art Gallery of Hamilton opening on June 27.
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In a press statement, Saltoun called it an “honor and privilege” to open a space in “a city renowned for hosting some of the most important exhibitions of the past 100 years.”
ARTnews spoke with director Aloisia Leopardi about the new space, what she’s most excited about, and why the gallery felt now was the right time to come to New York.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
ARTnews: What was the planning process for this new location? How did Covid-19 affect that?
Aloisia Leopiardi: The conversations had been going on for a long time. There’s moments in which things like Covid-19 slow [business] down. But this slowing down actually creates new opportunities. And that’s when we thought of opening a gallery in New York.
Actually, it happened quite fast. Richard and I were in New York for the Independent [Art Fair] last May. We both hadn’t been in a long time. And we were both like, “Wow, New York always has that feeling.”
I think it’s something that as Europeans, living in London or spending lots of time in Italy, when you go to New York, everything is so vibrant. Everything moves at twice the speed. It’s really fascinating. So we immediately started thinking we need to open a gallery in New York. At first, it was more of a dream initially. And then we’ve been contacted about this opportunity.
We’re opening the gallery in this ex-gallery space that freed up recently. We made an offer on the space just at the end of the year, and the offer got accepted, weirdly enough.
Lots of galleries closed during Covid-19. I think it helped us in this case because we were able to make an offer, enter, get the space.
We’ve had the space from January until now. It’s been renovated a bit. We’re very excited. The process has been kind of simple in a way. It’s been very smooth.
We’re really excited to be opening in May, with Jan Wade, who is our Canadian artist. It’s going to be the first solo show she’s ever had in in America.
After 10 years in London and then opening in Rome, what do you feel like you learned the most from those experiences that you will bring to the New York space?
First of all, our program is quite unique. We focus a lot on women artists. Now, it’s something that has become more and more common, but if you think about 10 years ago, no one was really showing women artists.
The first reason why we also chose to open in Rome is because in the ’60s and ’70s, there were fantastic artists working in Italy, which is similar, to New York to the US, if you think about it, it’s like two different periods, two different groups forming in the cities at different times.
Women were not represented at the time. Working with estates, you manage to find huge bodies of works that you can work with. So Rome, in that sense, was a very special place for us because we really rediscovered lots of artists we would have never discovered if we hadn’t opened a gallery in Rome. like Romany Eveleigh, who is going to be in the Venice Biennale this year. She was completely unknown until we started working with her.
We hope to do the same: bring our artists to New York, bring our program that is heavily focused on historical women artists, but also discover new artists at the same time. It gives us the possibility of spending more time there doing studio visits and estates visits.
In terms of difficulties, yes, of course, there are thousands of difficulties, especially the beginning: finding your way around, building a new team from scratch. Each one of us will have to work way harder, that’s for sure. Especially at the beginning, traveling back and forth between the three spaces, thinking of a program that would fit. Also every program is different. So it has to be catered to the audience it’s being presented to.
But New York, in that sense, also has amazing curators. We collaborate a lot with curators. Often we invite curators to either work with a gallery artist or present group exhibitions. So the location will also facilitate a lot of the dialogue with a more US-based crowd which could include curators and artists.
We already represent a few artists that are based in the US so that will give us the opportunity of really working with their works in more depth and be able to do more exhibitions.
For now, we were just coming to New York for art fairs. It will be nice to have a real presence for collectors also to see that we’re investing in New York and we’ll be able to see them more often. They’ll be able to have a sense of what our program looks like by attending our exhibitions. I think that will make a huge difference in terms of our credibility as well with building stronger relationships with artists, curators, and collectors.
What were some of the other positive indicators or business considerations that encouraged you to open a location in New York?
We have a program that is quite unique. We have a big US base of collectors. In a way, you know, it’s always a risk. We don’t really know how it will go, but we feel quite positive. I think New York is still really important for galleries to be there when they have an opportunity.
We are sharing the space with Franklin Parrasch. That will help us. We will do three exhibitions a year.
It’s a bit of a smaller program in New York at the beginning, which will help us get the whole programming going, the staff, etc. It will also give us time to go there and and focus on meetings, build, rebuild … we enhance our connections with the institutions, with collectors, with artists and then possibly expand the program even more. I think New York would be also positive if we sign on a new artist. I think like that already would be a great opportunity in a way because, from an artist’s point of view, or collector’s point of view, you feel you can trust a gallery with three spaces. Having three spaces allows us the possibility of showing more artists, bringing on new people, allows us to do more art fairs, just be more involved in general.
It’s a bit like the bigger galleries that actually we’re surrounded by—Hauser or Zwirner—they have spaces all around the world and it works for them. We’re a much smaller gallery, but I think it makes sense. The more you expand, the wider your network becomes, and the easier it is to sell, take on new artists, and have stronger relationships with curators.
It’s always difficult because we’ve never worked in the US before, apart from fairs. You never know, it might be a tragedy, but hopefully, hopefully it’s not going to be.
I feel like what’s good is that our program is so unique. Even speaking about recessions and sales going down, we have people coming up to us because we’re the only one really representing these sorts of artists. That helps us in a way. We never really had issues selling or our sales going down too much.
How did you decide on Jan Wade as the inaugural show?
The main reason why we chose Jan’s work is, first of all, because it coincides with her retrospective at the Art Gallery of Hamilton in Ontario. And secondly, because there’s lots of references, Jan Wade references a lot of her Southern American roots and the historic slave trade.
We thought there was a very strong, contemporary political relevance with what’s happening in the US today. Her paternal grandparents were from Virginia, Southern America. And because her work has never really been presented in the US before, just in Canada. The show now that’s opening at at the Art Gallery of Hamilton. And then she had a show before that was at the Vancouver art gallery in 2021 and 2022.
We thought it was a good moment to present her work, which we find is very strong. We’ve never shown her work before in a solo exhibition. We thought it would be interesting to bring it to a wider audience and for her to finally get the visibility that she deserves. She was born in 1952 and never really had much visibility until recently with these two major respectives in Canada, but that’s it. And so we thought it was the right time to bring her to New York and see how the public reacts because there’s all these resonances with the US.
How did you choose the location on the Upper East Side?
Everyone’s now opening in Tribeca, so it’s a bit of a strange location to open in. But actually, I’m so excited about it, because MoMA is like a 20-minute walk. It means that between one meeting and the other, I can literally pop into all my favorite museums that I never have the chance to visit during art fairs because I’m stuck at the booth. I think that will make a huge difference. Just to spend time in the book shops, you can discover new catalogs and publications. I think that will be really exciting.
I think the only difficulty for us working as a team will be the time difference. That will need a bit of adjusting.
I think the most exciting thing is that New York is always generating incredible exhibitions and no w we will finally have the opportunity of seeing, exploring, and discussing. I think that also adds to the beauty of New York in a way because there’s this aspect to it which is in constant evolution, which is so beautiful.