Altman Siegel, a prominent San Francisco gallery, will close on 22 November after 16 years in business. Founder Claudia Altman-Siegel announced the decision on 15 October, citing the difficulty for a gallery of its size to scale in the current climate. The gallery, which opened in 2009 at 49 Geary, expanded to a 5,000-square-foot space in the Minnesota Street Project complex and an outpost in Presidio Heights. Over its history, it staged 213 exhibitions and art fairs, representing artists such as Lynn Hershman Leeson, Trevor Paglen, Richard Mosse, Simon Denny, and Kiyan Williams. Its final exhibition will be an eighth solo show with Japanese painter Shinpei Kusanagi.
The closure is significant as it reflects a broader contraction in the US gallery ecosystem amid a post-pandemic art-market downturn. Altman Siegel was a stalwart of the San Francisco scene, known for championing multi-disciplinary and conceptual artists. Its shuttering follows a string of recent closures in Los Angeles and New York, including Blum, LA Louver, Tanya Bonakdar, Sean Kelly, Tilton, Clearing, and Venus Over Manhattan, underscoring the challenges facing mid-sized galleries in the current economic climate.