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Southern Guild gallery announces the opening of their new space at 75 Leonard Street in Tribeca, New York, in March 2026. The announcement coincides with the art gallery’s debut at Art Basel Miami Beach this year, signalling a pivotal moment in its international expansion. “The Tribeca location strengthens the gallery’s commitment to creating deeper opportunities for its artists within one of the world’s most dynamic cultural centres,” Southern Guild gallery notes in an official statement. The gallery plans to open a new 4,000-square-foot space in a restored cast-iron building, featuring two exhibition galleries, a viewing room and offices.
Founded in 2008 by Trevyn McGowan and Julian McGowan in Cape Town, South Africa, Southern Guild continues to champion contemporary artists who explore material innovation, cultural perspective and conceptual rigour. The contemporary art gallery represents more than 30 international artists, whose works have recently entered the collections of institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art.
“We see Southern Guild not only as a gallery, but as a cultural anchor in a global ecosystem —a platform where artists pass on knowledge systems, sustain their practices on their own terms and join together to articulate a movement,” said McGowan. “Our new Tribeca space is a physical affirmation of that mission, reinforcing that what we build must be reciprocal, respectful and rooted in the long game.”
Southern Guild’s Los Angeles space, its first permanent US location, opened in February 2024. The LA space will begin its relocation process in January 2026, following the Driftwork exhibition, curated by Essence Harden, while continuing to nurture West Coast relationships.
Andreá Delph, LA-based director of Southern Guild, who will relocate to New York to lead the Tribeca gallery, comments: “California gave us the space to listen, to gather and to understand how Southern Guild’s South African foundation could meaningfully enter the American cultural landscape. In LA, we became a conduit for continental and diasporic voices, opening deeper conversations around African and African-American modernity…I’m excited to return to the city that raised me, and to bring this work forward in New York, where the community we cultivated in LA can evolve in a new context.”
Southern Guild partners meaningfully with artists and nurtures new talent through educational projects, talks, mentorship initiatives and its own GUILD Residency, an international studio programme for artists seeking to engage with the local context. “Southern Guild is invested in the growth of the African creative ecosystem, cultivating an ethos of cultural exchange and interconnectedness through its robust international fair and biennale programme, and by partnering with curators, institutions and museums to realise distinctive interdisciplinary projects,” concludes the gallery.
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