Walker Contemporary to open Nov. 7

Stephanie Walker plans to open her new Walker Contemporary gallery at 450 Harrison Ave. in Boston on Nov. 7 with a group show. Last week she took over the cellar storefront, which was occupied Gallery Kayafas until Oct. 15, and is busy renovating. Walker, a former director of Chase Gallery on Boston’s Newbury Street, says her gallery will begin by primarily featuring sculpture and installations by West Coast artists.

“I feel really lucky because the energy down here is awesome,” Walker tells me.

Walker returned to Boston this summer after spending a year in Los Angeles, where she had worked as a private dealer. She had planned to open her gallery in part of Alpha Gallery’s space at 38 Newbury St., but that plan fell through when, she said, investors pulled out in July.

Walker says, “I have a financial advisor … who kept saying, ‘Think of the alternatives.’” She hadn’t much considered the South End, but she says she kept running into people at parties who pointed her in that direction. She liked that her rent at 450 Harrison is less than half of what she would have paid for Newbury Street, and that the space was already built out as a gallery.

“There was just no cost to entry,” Walker says.


Previously:
June 19, 2008: Walker Gallery to be at 38 Newbury St.
July 11, 2008: Walker not moving to Newbury Street.