Through the Speaker Series, CCS Bard brings distinguished artists, scholars, and curators to campus to present on their work. Speaker Series talks are held within Classroom 102 at CCS Bard. All talks are free and open to the public.
Gavin Brown is an art dealer and owner of Gavin Brown’s enterprise. Born in London in 1964, Brown has lived and worked in New York since 1988.
He opened his first gallery space in Manhattan in 1994, about six months after his first exhibition with work by Elizabeth Peyton in the Hotel Chelsea. Three years later, he relocated to a space on West 15th Street, where he staged exhibitions with, amongst others, Martin Creed, Peter Doig, Chris Ofili, Laura Owens, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Rob Pruitt. In 1999, he opened a bar, Passerby, next door to the gallery.
In 2003, Brown inaugurated his former gallery space in the West Village. From May 2010, the gallery also occupied the space that its neighbor, famed Manhattan meat purveyors, LaFreida Meats, once occupied. The inaugural exhibition at the expanded site was an exhibition of new work by Martin Creed as well as an installation by Jonathan Horowitz entitled, Go Vegan! — a clear nod to the building’s history. Brown fostered and curated unprecedented exhibitions in this space, such as Urs Fischer’s 2007 show, You, and Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Fear Eats the Soul in 2011.
In 2016, Brown relocated the main gallery space to a four-level former brewery on West 127th Street. In addition to his primary gallery location in Harlem, Brown operates two other gallery spaces: 291 Grand Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side and Sant'Andrea de Scaphis in Rome, Italy.