New York’s 47 Canal, a Longtime Chinatown Gallery, Decamps for SoHo

New York’s 47 Canal, a gallery that was founded in Chinatown in 2011 and has remained there ever since, will leave the neighborhood it has long called home, reopening in SoHo next month. The gallery announced the news in an email blast Thursday.

Founded by Margaret Lee and Oliver Newton, the gallery, one of the most closely watched commercial art spaces in Chinatown, has been located at 291 Grand Street since 2014. It officially opened in 2011 on Canal Street, though the gallery grew out of a project space in Lee’s studio that predated the commercial operation by two years.

A range of star artists had some of their first shows with 47 Canal, most notably Anicka Yi and Josh Kline. Michele Abeles, Antoine Catala, Danielle Dean, Gregory Edwards, KAYA, Elle Pérez, and Trevor Shimizu have also held shows with the gallery.

Its new address will be 59 Wooster Street, in a building that was once home to the now defunct gallery Alexander and Bonin before its move to Tribeca. The gallery will now be located down the block from the blue-chip dealerships Jeffrey Deitch and Hauser & Wirth, and not far from Tribeca, where a range of galleries have sprung up in the past five years.

The Lower East Side and Chinatown remain thrumming art districts, with their residents including Maxwell Graham, Bridget Donahue, Ramiken, Reena Spaulings Fine Art, Rachel Uffner, and a range of other outfits. But 47 Canal’s departure from the area is notable, since the gallery is the most high-profile one to date to leave the neighborhood, which was once the go-to destination for experimental shows by young artists.

Others, such as James Fuentes Gallery and Chapter NY, have left the Lower East Side for Tribeca, where they remain currently. But others still, from David Lewis Gallery to JTT, have made the move to Tribeca, only to permanently shutter not long afterward. (Several notable Lower East Side and Chinatown galleries have also recently closed, including Foxy Production, Helena Anrather, and, most recently, Simone Subal Gallery.)

The first show staged by 47 Canal at its new location will be “Summer with Friends and Family,” a group show curated by artist G. Peter Jemison that opens on July 3. Its last in Chinatown, a solo show by Kazuyuki Takezaki, closes on June 8.