Amelia Redgrift.
Amelia Redgrift.
©2019 SIMON CANETTY-CLARKE
Alongside architectural expansion and hires from the museum world, editorial offerings have been among the most familiar signs of growth at mega-galleries in recent years. David Zwirner currently runs a significant publishing department and a podcast, Dialogues, in which artists speak with guests of all sorts, and Gagosian and Hauser & Wirth both have magazines. Now Pace has plans to significantly grow its editorial offerings too.
The newly hired Amelia Redgrift will work as the gallery’s first senior director of global communications and content, beginning at Pace’s just-inaugurated New York flagship in early November. She will work with the gallery’s newly formed curatorial department to oversee the enterprise’s editorial projects.
“Through direct access to artists and in-depth research projects, Pace’s curators—alongside the gallery’s longstanding directors—have become experts on the program and are in some cases the living authority on individuals within the roster,” Redgrift told ARTnews. “We want to leverage this knowledge base to produce engaging editorial with and on behalf of our artists.”
Redgrift has worked at Hauser & Wirth, a Pace competitor, for six years. She worked in that gallery’s communications department and also helped launch Volume, a magazine that acted as a precursor to Hauser & Wirth’s quarterly, Ursula. She also helped produce a two-book Art Basel project earlier this year for the gallery.
Pace Gallery president and CEO Marc Glimcher said in a statement, “As we continue to develop innovative new ways of presenting art, we recognize that our brand is growing fast in scale and complexity. Amelia exhibits an innate understanding of the Pace ethos. Together we will craft a series of relevant and creative new approaches to fulfill our mission to redefine the gallery’s role in the 21st century, and to target broader public audiences for contemporary art.”
Redgrift’s appointment comes as the gallery has been expanding in a number of different directions. Pace recently opened its eight-story flagship building in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, and its curatorial department led by Andria Hickey (formerly of the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland) has grown to include Mark Beasley, Oliver Schutz, and Michaela Mohrmann. Earlier this year, the gallery also revealed plans to launch Pace X, an art-and-technology initiative.
Redgrift said her new role connects to all of Pace’s new initiatives. “Editorial can take many shapes and forms, and I’m particularly interested in the potential of the digital sphere, in alignment with our vision for exploring where art and technology intersect,” she said. “For Pace, an in-house editorial content program is particularly relevant as it will play an important role in Marc’s philosophy to make art accessible to the widest possible audience.”