In The Gallery with Donald Ryan

Donald Ryan opens the door to his gallery on the Upper East Side. Almost a year into having his own name above the door, the space still has the wonderful pristine feeling of newness. The rooms are quiet and pared back, with a fireplace, parquet floors and tall windows looking out onto a classic New York street scene. The Frick is just down the road, the Met a few blocks north, the green expanse of Central Park to our west.

Donald has recently returned to the US after five years spent in London. After more than a decade working in the art world, much of it behind other people's names, he has finally committed to putting his own over the door.

The gallery opened last autumn with an exhibition of work by Bill Rice, a painter and actor whose loft on East Third Street became a cross-generational gathering place for artists, writers and performers in the 1980s. When we visit, it is showing a new series of works by New York-born photographer Devlin Claro, who has just turned 30. Somewhere between those two distinct eras, and their visions of America and New York, is something of what preoccupies him as a gallerist.

“I hope people come to recognise the gallery less by the categories it represents than by a certain way of looking.”

Donald gives us a tour of the exhibition, Claro’s precise and uncanny photographic meditations on the New York City landscape, specifically the outer boroughs that the Queen’s based photographer lives in and inhabits. He’s also shown works by Leslie Bohnenkamp, an American artist whose sculptural and drawing practices developed in relation to postwar abstraction, craft, and gender politics, and E.M. Saniga, an American painter based in rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, whose work engages with the traditions and limits of realism and memory.

“I want the gallery to reveal itself over time,” he says. “I don't want to define the program too much. Instead, I hope that what I find interesting, important and beautiful becomes apparent through the exhibitions themselves. I do have a deep love for the history of twentieth-century American art, and I imagine that will always be an important thread in the program. But it's one thread. I hope people come to recognise the gallery less by the categories it represents than by a certain way of looking.”

Before we get too deeply into the intricacies of the art world, however, there is something more pressing to attend to. We have to take Odette, his wire-haired dachshund, for a walk in Central Park and get a coffee. Donald lives on the Upper East Side too, and the proximity between home, gallery and park is an important part of his life. “I love Central Park,” he says. “Walking Odette in Central Park is the perfect way to start a day.”

Donald got his start in the art world almost by accident. He graduated from NYU and needed a job that would allow him to stay in New York. He found one working for an art shipping company, thinking it sounded interesting enough but quickly realising that art brought together all the things he was interested in; politics, philosophy, art, business. “And of course all of the characters,” he says with a laugh.

“I hope that what I find interesting, important and beautiful becomes apparent through the exhibitions themselves”

It was enough to convince him that it could be an interesting career, and he eventually joined legendary French gallerist Emmanuel Perrotin's newly opened New York gallery on Madison Avenue as its sole registrar. “A position I was completely underqualified for at the time,” he says.

Donald had a talent for it though, and rose to be the space’s director before moving to Los Angeles to work for David Kordansky Gallery. During the pandemic he left LA and moved to London to study for an MA in the History of Art at University College London. After graduating, he joined Michael Werner Gallery in London before eventually deciding to work independently.

As we walk through the park we reflect on those London years, moving between the more formal structures of the art world but also in more experimental and provisional spaces. He organised exhibitions and advised on projects including a Cy Twombly exhibition in Los Angeles, a Peter Doig retrospective with Tramps at the Musée d'Orsay.

He ran a space in London, called Qrystal, in an old pharmacy that was being sold and developed. Rent was cheap. It was a place to experiment. “It wasn't conceived as a business as much as a place to make exhibitions that excited us and to do something new. It was a testing ground for me. It helped me understand the kinds of artists and artworks I wanted to work with and the way I wanted my future gallery to present itself.”

One lesson learned from London, after five years spent crossing town on the tube, was more prosaic. “I realised how much easier life is when your gallery is nearby where you live.” There is something almost circular about the decision to come back to UES. Donald began his career here and more than a decade later, he has returned to the same neighbourhood with a gallery of his own.

“In many ways, opening my own gallery meant beginning again, and I think I wanted to reconnect with that. I knew there would be a steep learning curve, and there was something reassuring about returning to the neighborhood where I first learned about the business. It felt like the natural next step.”

September brings an exhibition of works by Noah Jemison, an artist connected to the pioneering community centered around New York's Just Above Midtown in the 1970s, an arts space that promoted African American art in the late 70s and early 80s.

“There was something reassuring about returning to the neighborhood where I first learned about the business. It felt like the natural next step.”

“How we met is one of my favorite aspects of the project,” Donald says. “We were introduced by a friend of Bill Rice, who was renowned in his time for gathering individuals in his East Village studio. I enjoy imagining he played a role in connecting Noah and me."

That narrative carries a certain appropriateness. Rice's significance to Ryan's gallery goes beyond his actual art; his legacy was rooted in fostering connections and establishing an environment where artists and others could interact. Something all art galleries should do, and one Donald wants to continue.