A former senior director of the embattled Nino Mier Gallery will arrange her personal store in an area alongside Santa Monica Boulevard that after housed her former boss’s Los Angeles location. Megan Mulrooney’s aim for her eponymous gallery is to showcase rising and mid-career artists from Los Angeles and elsewhere in an area the place artists can curate displays alongside solo exhibitions, in keeping with a press launch.
Mulrooney was employed as a senior director at Nino Mier Gallery in 2018 and left in Could 2024, after The Artwork Newspaper revealed an investigation by which 4 of the gallery’s ex-staffers accused Mier of shortchanging artists. The gallery charged collectors one charge, then knowledgeable the artists of a cheaper price and pocketed the distinction, they mentioned. In 9 of the 21 instances seen by The Artwork Newspaper, paperwork present that the gallery’s artists had been shorted by between 20% and 54% of what their fee ought to have been, and amounted to a discrepancy of $31,000. The previous staffers who spoke to The Artwork Newspaper famous that the gallery didn’t alter data for each artist through the interval these situations occurred, between 2018 and 2019. Mier declined to remark, and shortly after the gallery confirmed to Artnews that it was contemplating closing its Los Angeles areas.
Mulrooney, born and raised in Los Angeles, had already been planning to strike out on her personal together with her personal gallery. Earlier than becoming a member of Mier, she labored as a specialist for a number of public sale homes and held different jobs within the artwork world, together with at Paddle8, Julien’s Auctions, St. George Valuations and Sotheby’s.
“I’m excited by the current consideration to Los Angeles’ burgeoning arts scene and desperate to contribute to the dialog by highlighting its wealthy historical past as effectively,” Mulrooney mentioned in an announcement.
Los Angeles-based artist Jon Pylypchuk will function a curatorial advisor for a collection of group exhibitions the gallery is planning by 2025.
“Megan’s resolution to go off on her personal has been years within the making, and he or she’s already confirmed herself a supportive gallerist with sturdy artist relationships and a eager understanding of Los Angeles’s cultural ecosystem,” Pylypchuk mentioned in an announcement. “The artwork world wants extra girls gallerists steering their very own ships, and I sit up for seeing her realise her refreshing imaginative and prescient with a community-forward ethos.”
The gallery will open in September with solo reveals by Marin Majic, an artist nonetheless listed on Mier’s roster, and Piper Bangs, an rising painter whose work was included in a bunch presentation at one in every of Mier’s Los Angeles galleries final yr.
“As a younger artist, it may be arduous to search out your footing on this business, so it’s refreshing to see somebody like Megan dedicated to investing in rising artists like myself, and I’m grateful for the chance to companion together with her,” Bangs mentioned in an announcement.
