COURTESY ARTTABLE
Frederieke Taylor, who cofounded the gallery TZ’Art and ran a namesake space currently open in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, has died at 77 of cancer-related causes. A representative for her eponymous gallery confirmed the news.
Taylor founded TZ’Art in New York’s SoHo neighborhood with Tom Zollner in 1993. Among the artists shown there was Yuji Agematsu. Five years later, in 1998, the gallery relocated to Broome Street and changed its name to Frederieke Taylor Gallery. Since 2000, the gallery has been open in Chelsea, first on West 25th Street and then on West 29th Street, which most recently ran by appointment only. Currently listed as artists that the gallery has shown are Benjamin Britton, Mel Chin, Meredith Monk, and Thomas Zummer.
Taylor was also involved in numerous arts organizations in New York. She was formerly president of the organization ArtTable, which gave her the Chapter Leadership Award last month, and she had more recently been chair of the board of the House Foundation for the Arts, a nonprofit affiliated with the musician Meredith Monk. She was also a board member of Art in General and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, for which she served as executive director from 1980 to 1986. She had also been on the advisory committee of the Storefront for Art and Architecture and the Franklin Furnace Archives, and prior to opening TZ’Art, she had also headed up the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire and the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture in Maine. In 2017, she started a foundation to help young artists afford studio space—FST StudioProjects Fund—with money garnered from selling an early Sol LeWitt wall drawing along with other works in her collection.
“She was a powerhouse, and her strength and curiosity gave Meredith Monk the support to carry on through the good times and tough,” Kristin Kapustik, executive director of the House Foundation, told ARTnews. “She will be missed and will always be within the foundation of the House.”
Anne Pasternak, director of the Brooklyn Museum and a friend of Taylor’s, said, “I will most remember Frederieke as a great champion of artists. She represented artists she believed in, even if their work didn’t fit easily into the marketplace. She was steadfast and true. She was passionate about seeing shows, open-minded, and curious. And she always had a smile.”
Jenny Dixon, the outgoing director of the Noguchi Museum in New York, said, “Frederieke had an insatiable curiosity and intellect tempered by an extraordinary generosity of spirit. She was unique in her sensibilities—a passionate consumer of contemporary art in its many iterations who steadfastly stood behind the artists, organizations, and people she believed in. She will be sorely missed.”
Andy Battaglia contributed reporting.