Hauser & Wirth will add another location to its portfolio of 15 exhibition spaces. This fall the mega-gallery will set up shop, just south of where it already operates two spaces, at 134 Wooster. It will be Hauser & Wirth’s third space in the city, after ones in Chelsea and the Upper East Side. “It’s not that we were looking for a space in SoHo,” Marc Payot, Hauser & Wirth president, said in an interview. “But this space became available and that’s what figured in our wish to be present there. We have a tendency to go to places where others don’t go.”
The ground-floor gallery, with 16-and-a-half-foot ceilings and 4,000 square feet of space, is one of the few remaining single-story buildings in the city’s SoHo-Historic Cast Iron District. The gallery will maintain the building’s architecture, which dates back to 1920 when it was built as a truck garage.
“For most of our galleries, we have transformed existing spaces into galleries,” Payot said. “When possible, we like to respect the original architecture and pay tribute to that when it is a beautiful space. In this case, a well-proportioned, simple space with skylights is ideal. It’s also very different from what we have in Chelsea or Uptown. We loved it, as it was in its bones.”
For just over two decades, SoHo was the undisputable premier gallery neighborhood in New York. In 1968, Paula Cooper was the first art dealer to open a commercial gallery space in SoHo, which was located on Prince Street. From 1972 to 1996, Paula Cooper was located on the same block of Wooster Street, before moving to West 21st Street in Chelsea. Other dealers soon followed, with 420 West Broadway hosting several galleries over the course of its history, including Leo Castelli, Ileana Sonnabend, André Emmerich, and Mary Boone.
Since the exodus to Chelsea in the mid-’90s, few galleries have remained or opened in SoHo, with the exception of June Kelly and Louis K. Meisel, which are still active, and Team Gallery, which operated on Grand Street and closed in 2020. From 1996 to 2010, Deitch Projects operated a few blocks south, at 18 Wooster Street, then the home of the Swiss Institute, which Jeffrey Deitch reopened as his space in 2016. In January, Los Angeles–based dealer Nino Mier opened a new space on Crosby Street, just south of Spring Street.
Hauser & Wirth’s opening in SoHo marks its first official gallery space in Lower Manhattan, though its founders did operate a temporary space out of an apartment on Franklin Street some three decades ago.
Gallery cofounder Iwan Wirth first had a presence in the city in partnership with David Zwirner, who at the time had a gallery at 43 Greene Street in SoHo. Under the name Zwirner & Wirth, that enterprise ran on the Upper East Side on 69th Street from 2000 to 2009, when Hauser & Wirth took over the space. It first opened in Chelsea in 2013 on West 18th Street, which it closed in 2016. In New York, the gallery continues to operate its 69th Street location in addition to a custom-built space on West 22nd Street, which opened in 2020.
The nearby neighborhood of Tribeca is a more common destination for galleries these days, with PPOW, JTT, Andrew Kreps, James Cohan, and Canada relocating there in recent years. Alexander Gray Associates and Marian Goodman Gallery have announced plans to open in the neighborhood.
Unlike Hauser & Wirth’s other spaces, the forthcoming SoHo gallery will have shows that will be on view for longer periods of time, as a way to encourage more sustained engagement with the shows. It’s an approach that takes into account “who is in SoHo,” which at the moment isn’t the most heavily trafficked neighborhood as an art hub, according to Payot.
“It gives the opportunity to visit in a similar way that you would visit a museum—we’re not caught in a six-times-a-year rotation,” he said. “Depending on what the show is, the gallery will create links with the cultural landscape of the city.”
Additionally, Hauser & Wirth announced that Artfarm, an independent hospitality group that was founded by gallery cofounders Iwan and Manuela Wirth in 2014, will open a new restaurant kitty-corner to the SoHo space, at 130 Prince Street, next year.
Artfarm currently operates two of the three restaurants at Hauser & Wirth’s locations, Manuela at its downtown Los Angeles space and the Roth Bar & Grill at its Somerset gallery. (The third restaurant, the Cantina in Menorca, is operated by the local Bodegas Binifadet.) Additionally, Artfarm operates a five-star boutique hotel in Scotland, the Fife Arms, as well as the Audley Public House in Mayfair and the Groucho Club in London’s Soho, among other properties.
“New York is a very dense urban environment so it’s not comparable to these places but what is the same and what has the same ethos is that proximity between the gallery and a restaurant,” Payot said. “Because these two spaces were available at the same time, we said this is a unique opportunity in New York to mirror these two very important entities for us. We love that proximity that creates spaces where artists want to be and where our community wants to participate.”
