Lubov Gallery Will Continue Under New Directors After Founder's Death

By Marcus Bennett

Francisco Correa Cordero, who founded the Chinatown gallery Lubov in 2016, died in August at 37, leaving behind a program built on unusual bets for emerging artists from beyond the New York mainstream. This week, the gallery announced it would remain open under new leadership.

Mode Bonafilia and Kristen Wasik will lead Lubov. Both worked under Cordero before his death.

"Following Cordero's sudden passing in August, Bonafilia and Wasik committed without hesitation to carrying the gallery forward," Lubov wrote in a statement posted to Instagram on Tuesday. "At a time in which alternative spaces in New York are becoming increasingly scarce, they regard Lubov's continuation as essential. Whether or not to continue the gallery was never a question."

Under their direction, the gallery will honor Cordero and build on his work. The statement named the kind of artist Lubov aims to show: those who "make work out of necessity rather than for market value."

Who are the new directors?

Bonafilia joined Lubov in 2025 as director of community programming and education. She stayed on through the weeks after Cordero's death.

Wasik directed the gallery's program from 2023 through 2024. She returned earlier this year. Her resume includes prior work at Chart and the now-defunct Lyles & King, two of the better-known names among the city's smaller commercial spaces.

The space takes its name from Luba Drozd. Cordero was married to Drozd when he opened the gallery nine years ago.

What does the change mean for the program?

In the short term, very little will change. Lubov's first exhibition under Bonafilia and Wasik is a solo show for Michael Hafftka, a New York–based painter. It opens October 24 at the gallery.

Hafftka works outside market fashion in a manner consistent with the gallery's long-running program, and his selection tracks with the mission the new directors publicly inherited and committed to uphold when they took control of the space this fall.

What does the change mean for the gallery's identity?

That question is harder. Cordero built Lubov's artistic logic over nearly a decade. During that time he exhibited Eunnam Hong, My Barbarian, Andres Serrano, Mimi Park, Shannon Cartier Lucy, and Covey Gong in a small Chinatown storefront.

The program drew critics and collectors well beyond the gallery's modest square footage and gave a platform to artists who had often struggled to find one in New York's larger commercial network.

That identity now passes to two administrators Cordero had previously hired, both already immersed in Lubov's day-to-day operations and shaped by the gallery's tight staff culture. They inherit a roster built on risk. They inherit a name whose echo is personal. And they inherit a neighborhood where alternative spaces have grown thinner in recent years.

The first public test arrives on October 24. What happens after that depends on whether two former employees can keep a founder's eye on the room.