New gallery Amelie, Maison d’Art opens in New York

American fine art dealers shrink from the decorative arts. But the ambitious new Manhattan gallery Amelie, Maison d’Art places paintings on equal footing with ceramics and sculptural modular seating in Soho, the neighbourhood still considered a creative epicentre in New York.

Step inside Amelie, Maison d’Art

Owner Amélie du Chalard perfected her egalitarian approach to art sales in three immersive locations across Paris. As an investment banker born into an artistic family, and then as a young collector herself, she resisted the chilly atmosphere cultivated by established dealers: ‘I really wanted to explore and reinvent the art gallery to be both warmer and more approachable.’

The textured and lyrical abstractions she has come to represent, in her current role as a gallerist, are neither overtly sexual nor political. A spontaneous and fast-growing American clientele—responsible for a whopping fifth of the Maison’s total revenue, in Paris—argued for the current American expansion. Walk-in customers are welcome, of course, but the new Manhattan gallery actually recommends scheduled appointments where collectors will view, perhaps, a personalized capsule of framed artwork that staff have propped on shelves in advance.

Even less orthodox, the gallery’s architectural fabric is embedded with permanent commissions from the Maison’s stable of a hundred international artists. Bronze freeform mosaic slabs are sunk permanently into the floor of the front room since ‘installations will transform a place by increasing the value of its experience,’ she says. So too will the chic dinner parties laid on the kitchen’s massive table fabricated from highly figured granite, to match the kitchen counters and backsplash. As in Paris, such evenings promise to culminate in a lively game of pool on the classic Billards Toulet table at the rear corner of the gallery.

Built originally in 1873, the 4,000-square-foot exhibition space fills almost an entire floor (du Chalard was charmed by its role in the ‘story of this building truly owned by artists’). Once an improvised live-work painting studio and ‘time capsule,’ the ground-floor unit was abandoned for most of the past decade. Yet it remained splendid even in disrepair, with clumsy storage racks for canvases and a wobbly mezzanine suspended using chain from the hardware store.

‘The raw potential was evident under an inch of dust,’ recalls New York architect Keith Burns, who collaborated with Paris-based architects Tess Walraven and Nike Vogrinec on renovations. Where original tin ceilings proved too wrecked to save, smooth new wallboard is painted in pale ecru. Historic restored cast-iron Corinthian columns shine in a soft vanilla. Though furnished without the trappings of a bedroom, the open plan, 14-foot ceilings, and impressive skylight still suggest a New York apartment fantasy. It’s the polar opposite of white-cube galleries, Burns notes, and it ‘feels like home.’