American Art Galleries Closing in Mexico City: ‘Nobody Likes a Tourist’

Over the course of just three months this year, three mid-sized US galleries have shuttered their outposts in Mexico City: Morán Morán (Los Angeles), Deli (formerly based in New York and now permanently shuttered), and Commonwealth and Council (Los Angeles). None of them had been in the country for longer than three years.

Seeking to expand their business to one of the buzziest art capitals in the world, the galleries faced rising shipping costs, issues with customs, and difficulty finding a place in the local market. That all made programming hard to sustain for these galleries.

Another contributing factor to these closures is the mismatch between Mexico City’s influence and the relatively small size of its market. Although Mexico City boasts a sizable art scene, with hundreds of museums, festivals, independent art spaces, residencies, and galleries, the market there is not very big. Sources put the number of serious collectors at below 20, with an ancillary market of only a few hundred. Most museums belong to the state and ceased collecting decades ago, leaving gallerists without institutional clients.

“It’s not necessarily odd that they closed. It’s odd that they opened in the first place,” said Issa Benítez, director of Proyecto Paralelo and vice president of GAMA, the local art gallery association. “It’s the confidence that’s surprising, their notion that Mexico is a strong market.”

GAMA was established in 2020, to lobby city officials to let galleries reopen with sanitary measures during Covid. It now has 26 members, with 2–3 new candidates for entry per year, and it plans a popular gallery crawl, GAMA Week, each fall. According to Benítez, none of GAMA’s board members ever met the directors of the shuttered galleries. “We don’t know them, they never reached out to us.”

“Nobody likes a tourist,” Chris Sharp said in an interview about the closures. Sharp, who founded Lulu in Mexico City 11 years ago, described the local art market as one of the hardest to break into for American gallerists. “Mexico has an understandably antagonistic relationship with imperial powers. If that’s where you come from, you have to work extra hard to integrate.” Lulu closed in 2023.

There are multiple factors that make Mexico City attractive for American galleries. The first is the strength of the dollar, which keeps operating costs low. “There’s not a huge necessity to sell a lot in order to stay in business,” said Sharp. Another factor is the universal interest among artists to show in Mexico. “Our artists were always very excited about the possibility of having an exhibition here,” said Aurélie Vandewynckele, Morán Morán’s director in Mexico City.

According to Kibum Kim, co-director of Commonwealth and Council, “from the beginning, it was not necessarily with a big financial expectation but as a platform for our artists and to have it be a way of meeting collectors.” There were logistical issues to running an exhibition program in two cities, plus participating in fairs.

According to Vandewynckele, Morán Morán’s operations also ran into greater difficulties midway through 2023, particularly with customs, which became more stringent during the last presidential administration. “There were several changes. And that delayed everything. They were asking for documents to release works that they’d never asked for before.” Coupled with rising shipping costs after the pandemic, operating in Mexico quickly became unsustainable.

None of which fazes Benítez. “The art market in Mexico is precarious, but it’s always been that way.” Local gallerists have learned to factor in unpredictability. “But landing like a UFO, without any Mexican artists on the roster, now that’s very complicated.”