Nan Goldinwhose art and activism inspired an award-winning documentary All the beauty and bloodshedjoins the Gagosian list, the gallery announced today.
This decision is a blow for the Marian Goodman gallery, which has represented the revolutionary photographer since 2018 and recently too. lost Gerhard Richter, its star of nearly four decades, to David Zwirner, another mega-gallery rival. (Gagosian also sued Richter for years.)
Goldin, 69, is known for her intimate portraits of the LGBT community during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and, more recently, her crusade against the Sackler family and her funding of major cultural institutions. In 2018, Goldin went public with his personal escape from opioid addiction. She founded a group called PAIN (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now), and became a vocal critic of the family behind Purdue Pharma LP, the maker of the opioid OxyContin.
PAIN’s well-documented protests against Metropolitan Museum of ArtTHE Guggenheimand the louver led institutions to cut ties with the Sackler family and remove the names of its members from their walls. TIME magazine included Goldin among its 100 “most influential” the people of 2022. All the beauty and bloodsheddirected by Laura Poitras, won the top prize, the Golden Lion, at the Venice Film Festival last year. He was a contender for an Oscar in the documentary film category this year (but lost to Daniel Roher Navalny on the persecuted Russian opposition leader).
Goldin declined to comment on Marian Goodman’s departure, and Gagosian did not give a reason for his change. The artist was reportedly looking for a mega-gallery and a large upfront payment from future sales, according to a person familiar with the situation. Another clue may lie in Andrew Leslie Heyward, a Gagosian director in New York, who had worked with the artist at the Matthew Marks Gallery, and then courted her at Marian Goodman.
Despite the rise in her public profile, Goldin remains undervalued by the market compared to her male counterparts as well as younger female artists, the hard situation of many of his peers. Its auction record is $284,500, set in 2002, according to the Artnet Price Database. Many of his photographs come in large editions – of 15 and 25 – and there are often inconsistencies in the size of works and editions, the person said. Its primary prices recently ranged from $15,000 to $50,000, depending on where the images are in the edition. The mega-gallery switch may be able to deliver exactly what Goldin needs to energize its market.
Gagosian did not say when or where Goldin’s first exhibition with the gallery will take place. She will continue to work with the San Francisco-based company Fraenkel Galleryspecializing in photography.
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