The London gallery Herald St, which for the past 20 years has nurtured the careers of artists such as Nicole Wermers, Cary Kwok and Pablo Bronstein, will open a new space in Bologna, northern Italy, early next year.
Although the Emilia-Romagna capital is known for its renowned culinary scene and the world’s oldest surviving university, rather than a thriving art market, it holds plenty of appeal for a gallery, says Herald St’s co-founder Nicky Verber. “People love travelling to Bologna and it is well connected to the bigger cities of Venice, Milan and Florence. It also contains a very interesting local collector base, and a small handful of excellent institutions, such as Mambo (Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna) and galleries like P420.”
Verber and his business partner Ash L’Ange canvassed their clients before confirming their Italian location, and received “very positive” responses to the Bologna plans. “Many of our European collectors expressed great enthusiasm about travelling to the city to see exhibitions.” Having a base in Italy also places the gallery’s programme in closer dialogue with the wealth of museums, private collections and curators across the country, Verber adds.
Herald St founders Nicky Verber and Ash L’Ange, in front of a work by Bologna-based artist Francis Offman
Herald St has been deepening its ties in Bologna for some years. It staged a group exhibition in the city in 2020 and signed the Bologna-based artist Francis Offman in 2021. It has also taken part in recent editions of the local fair Arte Fiera, Italy’s oldest for modern and contemporary art. That fair allows for “thoughtful, slower conversations with collectors from smaller cities nearby like Modena and Ravenna, in a way that Frieze and Basel fairs do not”, Verber says.
At a time when many mid-sized galleries are suffering from having pursued overly ambitious expansion plans, Herald St’s new space reflects a more sustainable strategy for business growth. “A Bologna gallery provides an outlet for a different type of economy,” Verber says. “Certainly the economic pressures of doing business there are not those of London. We are working in a financial context that we feel comfortable in.” Speaking of the current art market environment, he acknowledges the mounting challenges of doing business, “the art world is less playful than when we began and the financial barriers for entry are much higher”, but asserts that “every gallery’s story, and success, is unique”.
While plans for Herald St Bologna were underway well before Italy slashed its VAT rates on art to 5% earlier this year, Verber says the new tax regime “certainly doesn’t hurt” the prospects of opening there. “I suspect more galleries from abroad will open it Italy in the coming years,” he adds.
Located in the heart of Bologna’s medieval centre, the new space will feature three exhibition rooms and open with a show of the abstract painter Matt Connors. For now, the gallery will stage fewer shows there than in London—three or four, compared to five or six.
The Bologna gallery joins two existing Herald St spaces in London: the original location on the eponymous street in Bethnal Green, and another in Bloomsbury, near the British Museum, which opened in 2017, prefiguring the wave of commercial galleries that have opened nearby since the pandemic, including Union Pacific, Hot Wheels and A.Squire.