{"id":38790,"date":"2025-09-02T14:32:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T14:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/38790\/"},"modified":"2025-09-02T14:32:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T14:32:11","slug":"a-former-director-at-lower-manhattan-galleries-goes-it-alone-uptown-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/38790\/","title":{"rendered":"A former director at Lower Manhattan galleries goes it alone Uptown – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amid the recent string of large and mid-sized gallery closures, could smaller, emerging galleries step into the power vacuum? \u201cI 100% think they are the future,\u201d says Christiana Ine-Kimba Boyle, a New York-based dealer who has previously worked at galleries including Lehmann Maupin, Canada and Pace. \u201cThis whole idea of differentiating and categorising galleries\u2014megas, mid-tier, small\u2014is naturally disintegrating.\u201d<\/p>\n

This spring, Ine-Kimba Boyle launched Gladwell Projects<\/a>, a nomadic gallery with a staff of one. On 3 October, Gladwell Projects will unveil its second show, The Spirituality of Color, bringing works by chromatic innovators like Sam Gillam and Kylie Manning to a townhouse in Harlem. The gallery\u2019s first show, The Metroplex, was staged in the collector Christie Williams\u2019s Dallas home during the Dallas Art Fair<\/a> last April. The Dallas Art Museum acquired a sculpture by Chiffon Thomas and a photograph by Clifford Prince King as a result.<\/p>\n

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Antonia Kuo, Portal, 2025 Courtesy of the artist and Chapter NY, New York<\/p>\n

The Metroplex and The Spirituality of Color are both part of Gladwell Projects\u2019 Domestic Interventions series of exhibitions in private homes. The brownstone that will host The Spirituality of Color stands at 124 West 131st Street, in a landmarked historic district<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s one of the oldest and first row houses to be built in central Harlem,\u201d Ine-Kimba Boyle says. The house is hitting the market this month for $3.5m.<\/p>\n

Ine-Kimba Boyle\u2019s vision for Gladwell Projects began to take shape in 2018, when she was a recent Fordham University graduate working as a manager at Loretta Howard Gallery in Chelsea. She had studied art history and hoped to become a museum curator, but an internship at Gagosian led her into the commercial sector. Loretta Howard\u2019s strategy of working with renowned artists like Frank Stella while foregoing fancy dinners and expensive real estate offered Ine-Kimba Boye a model she eventually returned to.<\/p>\n

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Theresa Chromati, Fuck\u2014I Fuck Back ( Woman Births Woman ), 2025 Courtesy of the artist and Gladwell Projects, New York. Photographed by Mitro Hood<\/p>\n

\u201cStepping away from my past roles was about making space for the vision I had,\u201d Ine-Kimba Boyle says. \u201cIt was time to channel that experience into something more responsive\u2014and to do so at a moment when the market has been yearning for change.\u201d Although she is pursuing a nimbler format for her own business, Ine-Kimba Boyle is not advocating for a smaller-is-better approach across the board. \u201cI’ve seen incredibly brilliant exhibitions at mega galleries,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

She intends for Gladwell Projects to present blue-chip rigour at a scale conducive to closer community. \u201cI think that’s what a lot of collectors are sort of disillusioned from,\u201d Ine-Kimba Boyle says. \u201cA lot of people were questioning what they were buying into, beyond buying a piece of art.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Jason Fox, Melmoth, 2020 Courtesy of the artist and David Kordansky, New York and Los Angeles. Photographed by: Al Nowak<\/p>\n

She initially pitched The Spirituality of Color at Pace, where she says the powers that be liked the idea but said she would need to contract an outside curator to organise the show. Ine-Kimba Boyle opted to keep the premise for herself.<\/p>\n

The exhibition\u2019s theme has only grown more timely amidst the current socio-political climate in the US. In this era of scatterbrained, algorithm-addicted attention spans, where abstraction is on the rise, the show charts colour\u2019s multifaceted influence on the work of Modern and contemporary artists from Agnes Martin to Rachel Eulena Williams, both of whom are among the 19 artists represented.<\/p>\n

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Wook-Kyung Choi, Untitled, 1960s Courtesy of the artist and Tina Kim Gallery, New York<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile a lot of the stuff that we\u2019re looking at may feel new, it’s not,\u201d Ine-Kimba Boyle says. \u201cIn a moment where, from a political sense, brown and Black folks\u2019 contributions are being erased, I do think it’s nice to put together an exhibition that tries to pick up on historical connections and contributions to the canon that have made contemporary art what it is today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ine-Kimba Boyle says art and artists have become afterthoughts of sorts amid the frenzied art market calendar. With Gladwell Projects, her goal is to nurture the artists she has supported throughout her career, featuring them in her own shows and promoting their exhibitionselsewhere. She sees the art industry\u2019s \u201coverly competitive nature\u201d as partly responsible for the market\u2019s current downward trajectory.<\/p>\n

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Reginald Sylvester II, No Man Knows The Day or the Hour, 2025 Courtesy of the artist and Gladwell Projects, New York<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a quiet depth to the way Christiana engages with the work,\u201d says the New York-based artist Reginald Sylvester. The Los Angeles-based artist Brooklin A. Soumahoro adds: \u201cShe knows how to elevate the work, placing it in spaces that challenge it in the best possible way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gladwell Projects\u2014whose name commemorates Ine-Kimba Boyle\u2019s uncle, an artist who died in the Nigerian Civil War\u2014will eventually have a more permanent space. It will not be in trendy Tribeca, but in Harlem, where Ine-Kimba Boyle has lived for six years. For now, she plans to bring art directly to the global collector base she\u2019s built over the past decade. \u201cThis is the most exciting period of my career,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n