Sean Kelly Gallery

[1] Owner Sean Kelly began in the British museum world by curating shows by sculptors such as Richard Deacon and Anthony Gormley early in their career.

[2] He opened a place in SoHo, Manhattan, in 1995, with artists such as Marina Abramović, Joseph Kosuth, James Casebere and Robert Mapplethorpe.

[7] In 2018, Sean Kelly Gallery launched an initiative called Collect Wisely, an advertisement- and event-driven campaign aimed at reinvigorating the collectors’ interest in actual art, including ads placed in various publications (including the New York Times) featuring phrases like “Will history remember you as an investor or a collector?” and a billboard near the gallery on 10th Avenue carrying the slogan “Connoisseurship is not a dirty word.”[8] Another element of Collect Wisely was a series of invite-only salons held at the gallery, where people from a variety of backgrounds — collectors, but also writers, musicians and scientists — gathered for dinner and to discuss art’s emotional, rather than monetary, value.

[9] Also, Kelly launched the Collect Wisely podcast, in which he talks one-to-one with collectors like Pamela Joyner and J. Tomilson Hill about the essential values of art, their reasons for collecting and their cultural passions.

[11] In 2021, Sean Kelly Gallery announced plans to open a 10,000 sq ft (930 m2) space in the Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles, again designed by Mori.