Massey Klein Gallery Closes Lower East Side Space After Nine Years

By Tom Whitfield

Massey Klein Gallery will close its Lower East Side space after nine years, with its current Kate McQuillen exhibition extended through November 20. The husband-and-wife founders, Garrett Klein and Ryan Massey, announced the closure in a Saturday Instagram post and said they will continue with nomadic projects.

The reason, they said, was arithmetic. After early success, the numbers no longer covered the showroom, the dealers' family, and the gallery's artists.

"Previously, sales were up steadily, and we were hitting benchmarks each year," Klein said in a phone interview. "But four years ago, we started to go into decline. We were hoping that by this point we would start to see a leveling out."

What do the numbers actually show?

The gallery sells work by emerging artists in the $3,000-to-$20,000 range. Klein said it needs $30,000 to $40,000 in monthly sales to comfortably cover expenses, including rent of a little under $10,000 a month for the 1,000-square-foot space.

The founders opened with minimal capital — just enough to secure a lease and cover one month's rent, according to their farewell announcement. Both had worked at other New York galleries: Klein principally with Bertrand Delacroix, Massey at Mulherin and Pollard.

"We were blessed with some amazing sales right out of the gate," said Klein. But no cushion followed. "We never had a large nest egg to start a gallery. We have to sell the work."

As sales fell, the couple took other jobs. "With the numbers declining so much we've had to figure out other jobs to do," Klein said.

The gallery currently represents six artists: Chrissy Angliker, Lydia Baker, Bethany Czarnecki, Jude Griebel, Laura Sallade, and McQuillen. Klein said the dealers kept the artists informed so the closure would not come as a shock.

What distinguishes this closure?

Massey Klein is not the first gallery to shut in a difficult market. Many have closed in recent months; some farewell statements blamed the art market system, others cited legal battles, fallen business, or rising storage and shipping costs. Klein framed the gallery's identity differently from the start.

"Our relationship with God has informed what we want the gallery to feel like," he said. "We're all accustomed to feeling uninvited at galleries. We wanted to create a place of warmth."

Klein said he usually began his day with a brief meditation and prayer, and that the couple sometimes invited members of their Christian church community to prayer events at the gallery. Among recent farewell statements, theirs may be the only one that names a prayer practice as part of the operation.

The gallery earned institutional attention along the way. It participated in the Armory Show and NADA in New York, Untitled in Miami, and the Dallas Art Fair. At NADA New York in 2025, ARTnews's Harrison Jacobs listed its booth — Jude Griebel's work — among the fair's best.

What happens next?

The closure is of a space, not a business. The dealers plan to keep showing at fairs and will participate next year in the third edition of New York's Split Level art fair. They will also continue organizing displays with Groupe NYC, a collective of clothing designers whose Bowery showroom sits nearby.

What does this change for the gallery's six artists? Representation continues in a reduced, peripatetic form — fair booths and pop-ups rather than a fixed room on the Lower East Side. Whether nomadic operations can carry emerging-art prices without a storefront is the question the next year will answer.