Galleries • Gagosian Gallery is scheduled to open a 4,500 sq. ft space in San Francisco, on 657 Howard Street, directly across the street from the city’s Museum of Modern Art, on 18 May.
• After more than ten years of trading, the New York-based Laurel Gitlen gallery is closing down. Among its stable were the artists Corin Hewitt, Edgardo Aragón and Emily Mae Smith.
• Espasso gallery, in Tribeca, New York, which specialises in mid-century Modern and contemporary Brazilian design, is expanding with a new gallery space in Miami, in May. The gallery already has branches in London and Los Angeles.
• London’s Hales Gallery has opened an office space and private viewing gallery in New York, on 64 Delancey Street in the Lower East Side. Stuart Morrison, Hales’s director, heads the expansion.
• Joseph Nahmad, of the London branch of the Nahmad family, is opening his first gallery, Nahmad Projects, in Cork Street, London, on 9 June.
• Anne-Sarah Bénichou has opened a gallery for emerging artists on Rue Chapon, in the Marais district in Paris, with an exhibition by the Romanian painter Florin Stefan; other represented artists include Julien Discrit, Valérie Mréjen, Chourouk Hriech and Seton Smith.
• Olivier Belot, a 20-year veteran with the Yvon Lambert gallery, has founded the Until Then gallery, near Les Puces, Paris’s famous flea market. “More than 30,000 people come to Les Puces every weekend, and this area will become an art destination like the Marais,” Belot says. He plans to show work by Carl Andre, Kenneth Noland and Joan Jonas, among others.
• The Galerie Georges-Philippe et Nathalie Vallois in Paris is expanding with a new exhibition space at 33 Rue de Seine, near its original premises at number 36.
Auction Houses • Continuing the brain drain at Sotheby’s, Henry Wyndham, the charismatic chairman of its European business and an experienced auctioneer, confirmed his plans to leave the auction house. Wyndham’s last stand on Sotheby’s rostrum was for the 2 March sale of items from the collection of Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire.
• Following a Hong Kong staff cull, Bonhams has nominated Edward Wilkinson, its former director of south-east Asian, Indian and Himalayan art, as executive director for Asia, and Ingrid Dudek, the former vice-president of Asian 20th-century and contemporary art at Christie’s, as head of Modern and contemporary art, Asia. Phillips, meanwhile, has hired Jonathan Crockett (from Sotheby’s) as deputy chairman and head of 20th-century and contemporary art in Asia.
• Michael Goss has been named executive vice-president and chief financial officer at Sotheby’s. Goss was formerly a partner and managing director at Bain Capital. • Paul Roberts, Hanna Dougher and Alasdair Nichol, senior managers at Freeman’s, the oldest auction house in the US, have bought a controlling stake in the Philadelphia-based business, owned by the Freeman family since 1805. They have announced plans to hire staff and add salerooms across the US.
• Bruno Claessens has joined Christie’s as European head of African and Oceanic art.
Artist Moves• Marianne Boesky now represents Dashiell Manley. Pace Art + Technology now represents Studio Drift, while Kavi Gupta now represents the estate of Roger Brown.Ermanno Rivetti, with additional reporting by Brook Mason and Anna Sansom