Gavin Brown is a British artist and art dealer. He is the owner of the gallery, Gavin Brown's enterprise in New York City and co-founder of non-profit gallery 356 Mission in Los Angeles.[1] The 356 Mission art space closed in 2019, due to the lease ending.[2]
Brown grew up in Croydon in south London. His mother was a social worker; his father an architect, who abandoned the family when Brown was 11.[3] He attended Newcastle Polytechnic[4] – where his classmates included Matthew Higgs[3] – and later at Chelsea College of Arts. At Anthony d’Offay Gallery in London,[3] Brown worked as an assistant in the back room alongside Damien Hirst[3] before moving to New York in 1988 to continue his studies at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program.
Brown began organizing exhibitions in the early 1990s – including one for 303 Gallery in 1991 as well as pop-ups in at the Hotel Chelsea, in his apartment on the Upper West Side and in a cubicle he rented in a Midtown office building[3] – and opened his first gallery in Soho in 1994. In December 1993, he had a solo show of his own work at David Zwirner Gallery in Soho.[5]
In 2003, Brown served on the selection committee for the first edition of Frieze Art Fair.[6]
In the early 2000s, Brown ran a gallery in Rome called Roma Roma Roma with fellow dealers Franco Noero and Toby Webster, who have galleries in Turin, Italy, and Glasgow, Scotland, respectively.[7]
In 2012 he took a lease in Los Angeles for 356 Mission, a gallery that is operated as an artist-run space by painter Laura Owens.[7]
In 2014, The Guardian named him in their "Movers and makers: the most powerful people in the art world".[8]
In 2015, Brown and Rirkrit Tiravanija opened Unclebrother, a restaurant and gallery in a former car dealership in Hancock, New York.[9]
In July 2020, Brown announced that he would close his gallery and partner with Barbara Gladstone.[10] In 2024, he donated a range of materials related to his former gallery to Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies.[11]
Brown and painter Laura Owens have been accused of being involved with gentrification of a predominantly working-class, Hispanic neighbourhood with their non-profit gallery 356 Mission in the neighbourhood of Boyle Heights, on the east side of Los Angeles.[12] Activists of various anti-gentrification groups have protested their galleries and exhibitions in both Los Angeles and New York City.[12][13] The 356 Mission art space closed in 2019, due to the lease ending.[2]
Since 2011, Brown has been residing in Harlem where he moved with his wife, artist Hope Atherton, and their daughter. From a previous marriage with Scottish fashion designer, Lucy Barnes, Brown has three children.[3][14]
In 2005, Brown purchased a 700-square-foot weekend home in the hamlet of Lordville, New York.[15]