The Cape Town-founded gallery Southern Guild is making a state-side splash this week, showing at Art Basel Miami Beach for the first time and plotting a move from Los Angeles to New York. The gallery will close the West Coast space it inaugurated in February 2024 and open in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighbourhood in March 2026.
“California gave us the space to listen, to gather and to understand how Southern Guild’s South African foundation could meaningfully enter the American cultural landscape. In Los Angeles, we became a conduit for continental and diasporic voices, opening deeper conversations around African and African American modernity,” Andréa Delph, the gallery’s director in Los Angeles who will relocate to New York to lead the new outpost, said in a statement. “I’m excited to return to the city that raised me, and to bring this work forward in New York, where the community we cultivated in Los Angeles can evolve in a new context.”
Ambrose Rhapsody Murray, Scraped me with your kiss, 2024 Image courtesy of the artist
The gallery’s new Manhattan space, in a historical building with a cast-iron façade at 75 Leonard Street, will span 4,000 sq. ft. It will include two public exhibition spaces, offices and a viewing room. The gallery’s exit from Los Angeles comes amid a wave of closures in the city’s commercial sector, including the galleries Blum and LA Louver, the West Coast outposts of Tanya Bonakdar and Sean Kelly, and others.
“We see Southern Guild not only as a gallery, but as a cultural anchor in a global ecosystem—a platform where artists pass on knowledge systems, sustain their practices on their own terms and join together to articulate a movement,” Trevyn McGowan, who co-founded Southern Guild with her husband Julian, said in a statement. “Our new Tribeca space is a physical affirmation of that mission, reinforcing that what we build must be reciprocal, respectful and rooted in the long game.”
Southern Guild’s prominently situated debut stand at Art Basel Miami Beach includes a monumental sculpture by Zizipho Poswa, bright paintings by Marcus Leslie Singleton, photos by Zanele Muholi, bas-relief works by Chloe Chiasson, mixed-media works by Ambrose Rhapsody Murray and more.