Blue-Chip Galleries Are Fleeing Manhattan to Set Up Shop in the Tony Hamptons. Will It Be More Than a Summer Romance?

With dozens of major international art fairs and marquee events
cancelled for 2020 and galleries across New York still shuttered as
the city emerges from lockdown, a new mini-art market is booming
about 100 miles east of Manhattan on an ultra-wealthy stretch of
Long Island’s South Fork.

Several blue-chip galleries, including Pace, Van de Weghe Fine
Art, Per Skarstedt, and auction house Sotheby’s are opening spaces
in East Hampton this summer, hoping to capitalize on what may be
the most high-end captive audience of billionaire collectors and
connoisseurs gathered in one place in decades.

In a summer with no Venice Biennale, and with the high-profile
Art Basel in Switzerland now cancelled, the typical two-month
summer season in the Hamptons has now been extended, and the number
of well-heeled connoisseurs and collectors in Eastern Long
Island who are staying put has grown exponentially.

“I have never seen anything like it,” Upper East Side dealer
Christophe Van de Weghe said of the traffic in the Hamptons. The
gallerist, who typically participates in nine art fairs per year,
told Artnet News he has never considered opening a space in East
Hampton before, even though he has owned a home in the area for 20
years.

But after the beginning of the recent months-long lockdown, he
went in search of office space. When he stumbled upon a
1,600-square-foot ground-floor space with high ceilings on Newtown
Lane, he immediately envisioned a gallery where he could
show Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alexander Calder, Roy Lichtenstein,
and Andy Warhol.

After the past few months of quiet, he said, “I just want to
work.”

Bring in the Cavalry

The ink was barely dry on Van de Weghe’s new lease when he
phoned fellow Upper East Side dealer Per Skarstedt to check out the
adjoining space, which Skarstedt quickly snapped up. Mega-gallery
Pace, which has a new space around the corner, is also part of the
new gallery mini-cluster.

“This will be our first project in the
Hamptons,” Pace gallery president Marc Glimcher told Artnet News.
“It came about as a direct result of the situation created by the
pandemic since many of our clients are spending the summer out
here. We saw an opportunity to bring our artists and our would-be
Art Basel presentation directly to our audience and to generate
business ahead of our New York galleries reopening this
fall.”

Pace Gallery’s 1,700-square-foot gallery, located at 68 Park
Place in the heart of East Hampton Village, will open in early July
through Columbus Day, in October. The inaugural show is a solo
exhibition of new drawings by sought-after Japanese artist
Yoshitomo Nara. It will be followed by a solo show by Torkwase
Dyson.

And it’s not just galleries getting into the game. Sotheby’s is
opening a pop-up gallery in June in East Hampton, offering
artworks, 20th-century design objects, and luxury goods such as
watches for immediate purchase.

“The Hamptons have always been a popular setting for our
clients, and we’re excited to be able to show a selection of fine
art and luxury goods in a gallery setting, particularly at a time
when many have been and will continue to be out East,” David
Schrader, Sotheby’s worldwide head of private sales, said in an
email.

The New Chelsea?

“Call it reverse gentrification,” said Joel Mesler, owner of
the Rental Gallery in East Hampton and a
veteran art dealer who helped pioneer the vibrant Lower East Side
art scene in the mid-aughts.

“It’s the one percent of the one percent here, and there are no
galleries around. Newtown Lane is our version of 24th street,” he
said, referring to a stretch of Chelsea where Gagosian Gallery,
Luhring Augustine, Marianne Boesky and others have long operated
galleries.

To be sure, there is already a small but committed group of
galleries in East Hampton that includes Harper’s Books, Eric
Firestone, and Ross + Kramer. Most are slowly reopening their
spaces after months of being shut. Mesler, who uses his space as
his art studio in the winter months, just reopened on an
appointment-only basis with a show by Los Angeles-based artist
Elizabeth Ibarra.

“It really has always shocked me that
these large galleries were not here to begin with,” said Harper
Levine, owner of Harper’s Books, which has been
operating an art gallery and rare-book store in East Hampton for
eight years. (He also has a space in New York City). For a major
gallery with a big budget, these
spaces cost roughly the equivalent of a single art fair, he said.
Given the demographic, you could hang a $1 million painting on a
wall and “there’s no reason why someone wouldn’t just walk in and
actually buy it.

Here for the Long Run

The Hamptons has long been a summer playground for the
ultra-wealthy. Despite the area’s long history of artist residents
(Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning were only the most famous
such residents of Eastern Long Island), the Hamptons’s art market
has been relegated in the past few decades to splashy,
event-driven, and now defunct art fairs. (The areas does have
a broader landscape of revered art institutions, including the
Parrish Art Museum and the Watermill Center.)

So are the dealers opening in the Hamptons now in it for the
long haul? Art law specialist Thomas Danziger said he is currently
negotiating leases for two gallery clients in the area, and says
that he has seen 12-month and longer leases being signed.
“What makes better sense that having a
gallery on Main Street? It’s a destination for people
internationally now in July and August.”

Van de Weghe, for his part, told Artnet News that he signed a
three-year lease on his space. “We’re committed,” he said. “We want
to spend time here.”

The post Blue-Chip Galleries Are Fleeing Manhattan to Set Up
Shop in the Tony Hamptons. Will It Be More Than a Summer
Romance? appeared first on artnet News.