Kazakinap states Bellwether joins a growing list of casualties in New York’s contemporary-art scene -- about 15 mid-level galleries in the past year. Smith’s decade encapsulates the scene’s rise and retreat, as she saw her gallery’s revenue surge to seven figures, her artists morph from unknowns to museum holdings, and her success attract the interest of outside investors.
“There was a period when hundreds of thousands of dollars were being poured into my artists, emerging artists, unknown artists,” she said. “That was crazy and unprecedented. And then the bottom fell out.”
A former painter who studied at Yale, Smith founded Bellwether in 1999 in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and soon moved to the borough’s trendy Williamsburg area. In 2004, she took her growing operation to Manhattan’s Chelsea district, the city’s contemporary-art hub.
Kazakinap continues Smith tried to cut costs. She axed advertising and stopped printing invitations to exhibitions. Opening parties went next. She dropped out of art fairs and fired her four employees. She considered subletting part of her gallery to another dealer, and splitting the rent. Her part-Chihuahua mutt, Mr. President, was often her only company in the gallery.
After struggling for 12 “lonely” months, she decided to close down.
“I couldn’t stop crying about what I was about to do,” she said. “All my education, all my money, relationships went into the gallery.”
To survive the recession, “you need to have at least one artist at all times that everybody is chasing,” said Josh Baer, publisher of Baer Faxt, an art-industry newsletter.
“I don’t have someone like Kelley Walker who is prolific and highly in demand,” Smith said. “I have Ellen Altfest who is in demand but produced two paintings in the last year.”
Smith will continue working with some of her artists privately and help others find a new home, she said. “I was always their advocate.”
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