Accounts revealed that the gallery misplaced roughly £1.7 million in 2023.
Guests attending an artwork gallery (Picture: Getty)
London’s modern artwork gallery has shut its doorways completely after three many years in enterprise. Stephen Friedman Gallery, based mostly on Cork Road in Mayfair, has entered administration. The gallery appointed joint directors on February 12, Nedim Ailyan and Glyn Mummery of FRP Advisory Buying and selling Restricted. All 25 members of employees have reportedly misplaced their jobs, with artists suggested to retrieve works from the gallery earlier than early February. The closure additionally impacted its attendance at Artwork Basel Qatar, the place the gallery was imagined to current a solo sales space of labor by the late Huguette Caland. The presentation was taken over by the Huguette Caland Property as an alternative.
It first confirmed the transfer earlier this month in an announcement. “Stephen Friedman Gallery has commenced the administration course of on February 2, 2026 to permit for an orderly assessment of its monetary place,” the gallery stated on February 4. “FRP Advisory have been appointed because the administrator. All issues at the moment are topic to the administrator’s consideration. The gallery is now closed to the general public and isn’t presenting at Artwork Basel Qatar this week.”
Stephen Friedman Gallery goes into administration after 30 years (Picture: Google Maps)
Based in London in 1995, Stephen Friedman Gallery rapidly turned essential within the capital’s modern artwork scene, representing internationally recognised artists.
In November 2023, the gallery additionally opened a New York area in TriBeCa, permitting its artists to exhibit in america with out partnering with one other gallery. Nevertheless, that outpost closed simply three months in the past, with the transfer introduced on the time as a part of a consolidation technique targeted on London.
Behind the scenes, nonetheless, there have been evident monetary pressures.
Accounts revealed that the gallery misplaced roughly £1.7 million in 2023, citing the prices of setting up two new gallery areas, paying lease on new premises earlier than shifting, and holding on to the outdated area throughout refurbishment. Based on The Artwork Newspaper, the filings additionally pointed to “a powerful downturn within the business’s financial market” contributing to difficulties.
Auditors warned that the enterprise was counting on outdoors financing to cowl day-to-day prices, elevating doubts about whether or not it might proceed to satisfy its short-term obligations.
Though projections for 2025 had been described as “optimistic”, filings acknowledged that as a result of “the slower than ordinary sell-through of a significant exhibition on the finish of 2024 and a gradual begin to 2025, money movement is at the moment tight”.
The latest accounts, which had been as a result of be filed on the finish of January, haven’t but been made public.
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The Canadian-born, London-based seller Stephen Friedman opened his first gallery area in Mayfair at a time when the Younger British Artists, a free group of latest artists outstanding within the late Eighties and Nineties, dominated the scene. Over 30 years, the gallery has been supporting worldwide expertise and staging formidable exhibitions within the coronary heart of the capital.
Now, with the doorways closed, one in every of London’s many established modern artwork dealerships has come to a sobering finish.
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