The announcement that White Cube would open its first New York gallery this year was met with nods, not gasps, by art industry insiders. More surprising was that the London-founded gallery had taken so long to plant a permanent flag across the pond.
“We’ve been talking about New York since I joined 17 years ago,” says Susan May, the gallery’s global artistic director, with a laugh. She points to White Cube’s slow, steady expansion across the U.S. in recent years: the 2018 opening of an office in Manhattan; the launch of off-site exhibitions in Aspen, Colorado that same year; and finally, the 2020 opening of a seasonal gallery in West Palm Beach, Florida.
When asked why Jay Jopling, White Cube’s founder, hadn’t pulled the trigger on a New York home until now, May says it came down to location. “The key thing was really to find the right space,” she says.
The wait was worth it. On Oct. 3, the gallery will open inside a former bank building on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, a stone’s throw from Central Park and blocks from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, and the former Whitney Museum building recently purchased by Sotheby’s.
White Cube New York boasts three floors and 8,000 square feet of space, most of which will be dedicated to exhibitions. “There were a lot of locations in consideration,” says Caspar Jopling, White Cube’s director of strategic development and the founder’s nephew. One major challenge: The gallery wanted a site that hadn’t previously housed an art organization. “It’s a tabula rasa,” notes May. “It doesn’t have anybody else’s imprint.”
That a gallery named White Cube would be so picky about space is ironic. Then again, Jopling knows the importance of location more than most. In 1993, the then-upstart dealer scored a five-year, rent-free lease on a space in London’s tony St. James’s neighborhood.
What distinguished Jopling’s outfit from other, stuffier spots in the West End was a penchant for of-the-moment art and a novel policy on how it would be shown: No artist would ever exhibit more than once. Over the next eight years, White Cube played host to some of the era’s best talents, including Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, and Gavin Turk.
The business has only grown since. Additional London branches opened in 2000, 2006, and 2011. A Hong Kong outpost came in 2012, followed by a Paris gallery in 2019, and one in Seoul earlier this year. (White Cube also operated a São Paulo space from 2012 to 2015.) Along the way, the gallery let go of its “one artist, one show” rule and built a stable of some 60 international artists, including Mona Hatoum, Anselm Kiefer, and Doris Salcedo.
White Cube’s newest arm will open just in time for its 30th anniversary. For Courtney Willis Blair, the gallery’s newly named U.S. senior director, all that history is top of mind. “For me, it’s really about the foundation of White Cube—what White Cube has been and what it continues to be,” she says. “How do we bring that to New York and then add on top of it?”
A former partner and senior director at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Willis Blair developed a reputation for championing young, rigorous artists with strong points of view. Nine months into her new job, she has already put her stamp on White Cube’s roster, helping to recruit the Philadelphia-based interdisciplinary artist Tiona Nekkia McClodden, with whom she worked at her former gallery.
McClodden is one of several artists included in “Chopped & Screwed,” the group show that will inaugurate White Cube’s New York space this fall. Taking its name from the down-tempo, narcotized brand of hip hop popularized in 1990s Houston, the exhibition “looks at how artists are using a methodology of sourcing, distorting, and slowing down as a means to be transgressive, and to really think about the subversion or the dismantling of systems of power and systems of value,” explains Willis Blair.
Artists like David Hammons, David Altmejd, and Julie Mehretu—along with others who are not represented by White Cube—will fill out the exhibition. The show reflects both Willis Blair’s interests and something more: a distinctly American sensibility that is budding under her direction. It also shows the trust that Jopling has in his new home and hire. “This is not an outpost,” says May. “This is a major gallery for us. And it’s a major focus for us in terms of White Cube’s direction.”
"Chopped & Screwed" will be on view from October 3-28, 2023 at White Cube in New York.
