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 objective 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 shows alongside solo exhibitions, in line with a press launch.
Mulrooney was employed as a senior director at Nino Mier Gallery in 2018 and left in Might 2024, after The Artwork Newspaper revealed an investigation wherein 4 of the gallery’s ex-staffers accused Mier of shortchanging artists. The gallery charged collectors one price, then knowledgeable the artists of a lower cost 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 information for each artist in the course of 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 along 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 latest consideration to Los Angeles’ burgeoning arts scene and desirous to contribute to the dialog by highlighting its wealthy historical past as effectively,” Mulrooney mentioned in a press release.
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 robust artist relationships and a eager understanding of Los Angeles’s cultural ecosystem,” Pylypchuk mentioned in a press release. “The artwork world wants extra ladies gallerists steering their very own ships, and I look ahead to 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 gaggle presentation at one in all Mier’s Los Angeles galleries final 12 months.
“As a younger artist, it may be onerous to search out your footing on this trade, 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 accomplice along with her,” Bangs mentioned in a press release.
