Trailblazing Art Dealer Andrea Rosen Donates Her Gallery Archives to the Smithsonian

The influential art dealer Andrea Rosen is getting a permanent
spot at the Smithsonian. Or, at least, her papers are.

The veteran dealer and prominent taste-maker has donated her
archives to the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art in
Washington, DC. Rosen, who opened her gallery in SoHo in 1990,
surprised the art world when she announced, in 2017, that she would close her
spaces and stop representing living artists.

Now, the legacy of her gallery will live on in the form of
hundreds and hundreds of boxes of records that paint a dynamic
picture of what it was like to run an art business in the 1990s and
early aughts. The records measure 250 linear feet and include
photos, correspondence, checklists, price lists, and press
clippings.

Photographs that Rosen took of installations, dinners, art
fairs, and studio visits are a highlight of the collection, the
Smithsonian said in a statement. The archives also contain detailed
business and financial records related to the production of
artworks.

Rosen is perhaps best known for championing the work of Felix
Gonzalez-Torres, the Cuban-American artist whose paper stack works
were the subject of the gallery’s first show in 1990. (In 2017,
Rosen said she planned to shift her focus from running the gallery
to working with the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, which she
co-represents with David Zwirner.) Rosen also played a key early
role in the careers of artists including Rita Ackermann, John
Currin, Sean Landers, Wolfgang Tillmans, Andrea Zittel, Ryan
Trecartin, and Lizzie Fitch.

Building archives for her artists “was always a critical
component of the gallery’s focus,” Rosen said in a statement. “I am
delighted and proud that these artist archives as well as the
gallery’s archives will be held, cared for, and accessible in the
most important archive in America.”

Calling the gallery a “vibrant and stalwart presence in New
York’s art scene for 27 years,” American Archives director Kate Haw
said: “Andrea’s eye for young talent is legendary and her
exhibitions were truly groundbreaking. With her very generous gift,
we aim to preserve the gallery’s mission to be ‘conceptually
rigorous, fully aware of the responsibility of putting one’s
subjectivity in the public realm, and unafraid of actually being
beautiful.’”

The Rosen records will join those of Leo Castelli Gallery, Betty
Parsons Gallery, André Emmerich Gallery, Tanager Gallery, Park
Place, and around 200 other historic galleries held by the
Archives. Rosen’s is the first gallery founded in the 1990s to be
represented in the collection.

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