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Bortolami, the gallery run by Stefania Bortolami that’s been on West 20th Street in Chelsea since 2010, will be leaving for a new space in Tribeca, at 39 Walker Street.
Bortolami—who previously ran a gallery with dealer Amalia Dayan on West 25th Street, and before that worked at Gagosian Gallery—confirmed the move to ARTnews in an interview at the Chelsea space, where she will remain until April.
“I’m pretty happy to be going away from Chelsea,” she said in the interview. “This whole block is going to be torn down to become condos—it’s insane. Not only here, but every block. They’re tearing down, tearing down. It’s changing very, very rapidly.”
“It’s exciting,” she added. “From the point of view of a gallery like mine, it makes no sense anymore to stay here.”
The space is 9,000 square feet, which is bigger than Bortolami’s current space, and she’s paying the same amount of money on rent.
“It’s heaven—heaven—and we’re all excited,” she said. “Everyone in the gallery is like, Yes, let’s get out of here.”
The new gallery is on the same block as fellow ex-Chelsea outfit Alexander and Bonin, and close to Artists Space Books & Talks. It’s also a quick walk from the southern edge of SoHo, home to Team Gallery and Peter Freeman. That part of the neighborhood’s been given a shot of adrenaline by Jeffrey Deitch, who moved back into his Grand Street space in September 2015, and took back his old Wooster Street space—home to Swiss Institute while Deitch was in Los Angeles working as the director of MOCA—in September of this year.
According to sources, the Chelsea building that currently houses Bortolami, at 520 West 20th Street, will indeed be redeveloped as condos, with the owner looking to have tech startups sign leases for the ground floor spaces. The block has already lost Elizabeth Dee to Harlem and will soon lose Anton Kern to Midtown.
Bortolami is also optimistic that other galleries being pushed out of Chelsea will join her in Tribeca.
“I think there will be a few more people,” she said. “This is not the chichi part of Tribeca. There’s a chance for something nice happening. I know there are some galleries that need to move from Chelsea. The moment when you have momentum…Already, from the moment when I said I was interested in this space, I got a lot of calls. You know what I mean?”
Update, 11:30 a.m. Added that Bortolami will remain in Chelsea until April.