Gagosian To Close One Of Its London Galleries After 19 Years

Gagosian, the world’s largest gallery empire, will shutter one of its three London locations after 19 years in operation. The space, sited on Britannia Street, near King’s Cross, will officially close this summer, according to the Financial Times, which first reported the news on Thursday.

Opened in 2004, the Britannia Street location was the second gallery that Gagosian ever opened in London, one of the world’s main art hubs. (Its first, on Heddon Street, closed in 2005.) Occupying more than 15,000 square feet, it is slightly smaller than at least one of the other two Gagosian spaces in London.

Gagosian will continue to maintain its London galleries on Grosvenor Hill and Davies Street.

The Financial Times report did not state why Gagosian had chosen to shutter the Britannia Street gallery. It is, however, not the first blue-chip gallery to scale back its presence in London, a city whose market faced uncertainty following Brexit in 2020.

That year, Marian Goodman Gallery, a much smaller enterprise that also has significant clout in the market, shuttered its London gallery in order to “pursue a more nimble approach” there, according to its founder. It’s possible that Gagosian may have similar reasons for ending business on Britannia Street, as the Financial Times reported that the gallery has plans to launch Gagosian Open, which will situate artworks in public sites around London.

The Britannia Street gallery is not the first one that Gagosian, a business characterized by rapid expansion in the past couple decades, has shuttered recently. In 2021, the gallery closed its San Francisco space in order to better concentrate its efforts in Los Angeles, where it took over the Marciano Art Foundation’s building.

Still, Gagosian has not stopped growing. Since 2020 alone, the gallery has announced plans to open new spaces in Paris, Athens, and Gstaad, Switzerland. And in the past year, the gallery has added around ten artists to its roster, among them Nan Goldin, Cy Gavin, and Jadé Fadojutimi.