COURTESY PETER BLUM GALLERY
After being forced out of its 57th Street building due to impending demolition, Peter Blum Gallery in New York has found a new space at 176 Grand Street, where Little Italy meets SoHo and just a few blocks from the heart of the Lower East Side Gallery scene. The 7,000-square-foot second-floor space will open in September with a show of work by John Zurier.
“After having been informed that our building on West 57th street, along with four neighboring buildings, will be torn down for another high rise, we looked at many different places and areas which would suit our needs for a substantial size gallery in an area which was not overrun and still felt like ‘New York,’ ” director David Blum told ARTnews in an email.
Blum noted that the location places the gallery among many others to pull up roots and establish a new space in the area. James Cohan, Gavin Brown, Marc Straus, and Peter Freeman have all opened spaces on Grand Street in recent years, and Jeffrey Deitch returned to his Grand Street space in 2015 after a stint in Los Angeles.
The gallery also revealed that it has added a few artists to its roster: Miles Coolidge, Paul Fägerskiöld, and Enoc Perez. Peter Blum will also represent the estates of filmmaker Chris Marker and Abstract Expressionist Sonja Sekula.
The need for a new space arose last February when it was revealed that the landlord of 20 W. 57th Street had decided to tear down the building to put up new condos. Other galleries at that address were Washburn Gallery and Laurence Miller Gallery.