{"id":2136009,"date":"2026-09-09T13:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T10:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2136009"},"modified":"2026-09-09T13:15:00","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T10:15:00","slug":"eric-firestone-to-open-new-gallery-in-west-palm-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2136009","title":{"rendered":"Eric Firestone to Open New Gallery in West Palm Beach"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tEric Firestone is expanding south. The dealer will open his fifth gallery space, this time in West Palm Beach in mid-November, adding a permanent South Florida location to his two spaces in New York and two in East Hampton. The new gallery, at 2412 Florida Avenue, will occupy a warehouse space near the Norton Museum of Art.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Firestone, who grew up in Miami and left South Florida in 1989, the move is both a homecoming and a bet on a region he\u2019s familiar with as an art dealer. \u201cI was just really kind of doing enough business down there,\u201d Firestone told\u00a0ARTnews<\/em>\u00a0of his reasoning. \u201cI had enough friends and family down there that it just made sense to me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFirestone has watched plenty of galleries descend on wealthy seasonal enclaves, particularly during the pandemic, only to retreat once the moment passed. He isn\u2019t interested in doing the same. Instead, he\u2019s opting to follow a different model, one he himself has cultivated, out East at his East Hampton locations for the past 16 years.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTo really make a gallery work in a community like that, you have to be open for most of the year and be accessible,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople know you\u2019re a go-to in the community.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Hu\u00ea Thi Hoffmaster, Untitled<\/em>, 2026.<\/span>Courtesy the artist and Eric Firestone<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tThere is also some fairly straightforward arithmetic behind the expansion even in a difficult art market, which has seen galleries reduce their footprints or close altogether. Firestone said the cost of maintaining the West Palm Beach gallery for most of the year, closing only during the quiet summer months, works out to roughly what he would spend participating in two international art fairs. \u201cThis isn\u2019t a loss leader for me,\u201d he said. \u201cIf I\u2019m doing this, I have to produce. My business has to produce.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFirestone said he never considered opening another New York location or expanding to Los Angeles, as other colleagues have done, preferring to ship his inventory up and down the East Coast over operating a bicoastal gallery.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWest Palm Beach will also operate somewhat differently from his other locations. Rather than relying on a conventional calendar of solo and two-person exhibitions, Firestone plans something closer to a continuously changing \u201csalon or showroom\u201d where he\u2019ll be mixing historical material with work by younger artists.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI want to create an experience in there,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t mind showing a younger artist where the market is just starting to get going or early legs up against an historic work that\u2019s really established.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe idea fits neatly with his gallery program, which has increasingly become associated with resurrecting the work of postwar American artists, including Joe Overstreet, Thomas Sills, Marcia Marcus, Martha Edelheit, and Pat Passlof, with a focus on institutional acquisitions.<\/p>\n

\n\tPasslof offers perhaps the clearest example. Firestone has represented her estate since 2020, mounting his first exhibition of her work the following year and a sold-out solo presentation at Frieze Masters in 2022. Over the past decade, her paintings have entered collections including the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, Crystal Bridges, and the North Carolina Museum of Art.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Pat Passlof, Pachanga<\/em>, 1961.<\/span>\u00a9 Milton Resnick Pat Passlof Foundation<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tOn September 9, Firestone will open \u201cAfter Magic: Early Works by Pat Passlof: 1948\u20131962\u201d at his Great Jones Street gallery. The exhibition includes around 35 small paintings and two monumental canvases, beginning with the summer she spent studying under Willem de Kooning at Black Mountain College. Passlof was hardly an outsider. She helped renovate the Eighth Street loft that became the first home of the Artists\u2019 Club, co-founded the March Gallery in 1956, and had a solo exhibition at Dick Bellamy\u2019s Green Gallery in 1961. Yet her name never achieved the familiarity of many of her male contemporaries.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThat gap is just the kind of thing that interests Firestone. He said younger artists in particular have become increasingly curious about historical work beyond the familiar names that dominate textbooks and museum collections. \u201cThere\u2019s these other voices during these periods that were making work that was radical,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s where we have a lot of fun as a gallery, just putting this examination to the test.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter 33 years in the business, Firestone said expansion also serves a less complicated purpose: keeping himself interested. \u201cI still have a little bit of a shoot-from-the-hip mentality,\u201d he said. \u201cYou do this long enough, you got to keep it fresh for yourself. There\u2019s so many dealers that look like they\u2019re just going through the motions\u2014boring.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ERIC5.jpg?w=1024″] Eric Firestone is expanding south. The dealer will open his fifth gallery space, this time in West Palm Beach in mid-November, adding a permanent South Florida location to his two spaces in New York and two in East Hampton. The new gallery, at 2412 Florida Avenue, will occupy a warehouse space near […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2136009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2136009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2136009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2136009\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2136009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2136009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2136009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}