Art Market Monitor

Bloomberg’s Scott Reyburn talks to Michael Hue-Williams about the closing of his large space and the difficulties of running a London Gallery these days.

Albion Gallery, a hi-tech space designed by Norman Foster on the banks of the river Thames, will close in June, after shutting its site on Upper East Side of Manhattan, Michael Hue- Williams, its director, said last night. An unrelated gallery, The Approach, in the U.K. capital’s Fitzrovia district, also announced yesterday that it will shut next month.

“We’re retrenching right back to a smaller operation in London,” Hue-Williams said in a telephone interview. “This kind of gallery isn’t sustainable in the current environment. It’s a very tough climate. No one has experienced this before. Everyone is under enormous pressure.”[ . . . ]

“We’ve got to be in a 2009 mentality,” he said. “We’re having to come off asking prices by a minimum of 20 percent to close a deal.”

Gallery Slump Claims More Victims as Albion Shuts in US, UK (Bloomberg)

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