Herald St, a prominent London gallery that has spent two decades building the careers of notable artists including Nicole Wermers, Cary Kwok, and Pablo Bronstein, announced plans to open a new exhibition space in Bologna, northern Italy, in early 2024. The expansion represents a calculated move into the Italian art market for the established gallery.
While Bologna may be better known for its world-renowned culinary scene and housing the world's oldest surviving university rather than a bustling art market, the Emilia-Romagna capital offers significant advantages for gallery operations, according to Herald St co-founder Nicky Verber. "People love traveling to Bologna and it is well connected to the bigger cities of Venice, Milan and Florence," Verber explained. He also highlighted the city's "very interesting local collector base" and praised several excellent cultural institutions, including Mambo (Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna) and galleries like P420.
Before finalizing their Italian location, Verber and his business partner Ash L'Ange conducted extensive consultations with their client base, receiving overwhelmingly positive feedback about the Bologna expansion plans. "Many of our European collectors expressed great enthusiasm about traveling to the city to see exhibitions," Verber noted. The Italian presence will also strengthen the gallery's connections within the country's rich cultural landscape, placing "the gallery's program in closer dialogue with the wealth of museums, private collections and curators across the country."
Herald St has been steadily building relationships in Bologna over recent years through various strategic initiatives. The gallery staged a group exhibition in the city in 2020 and signed Bologna-based artist Francis Offman to their roster in 2021. Additionally, Herald St has participated in recent editions of Arte Fiera, Italy's oldest fair for modern and contemporary art. Verber emphasized that the local fair environment offers unique advantages, allowing for "thoughtful, slower conversations with collectors from smaller cities nearby like Modena and Ravenna, in a way that Frieze and Basel fairs do not."
The Bologna expansion comes at a time when many mid-sized galleries are struggling with overly ambitious growth strategies, making Herald St's approach appear more measured and sustainable. "A Bologna gallery provides an outlet for a different type of economy," Verber explained. "Certainly the economic pressures of doing business there are not those of London. We are working in a financial context that we feel comfortable in." He acknowledged the current challenging market conditions, stating that "the art world is less playful than when we began and the financial barriers for entry are much higher," while maintaining that "every gallery's story, and success, is unique."
Italy's recent decision to slash VAT rates on art to 5% earlier this year has created additional incentives for international galleries, though Verber noted that Herald St's Bologna plans were already underway before this policy change. "It certainly doesn't hurt the prospects of opening there," he said, predicting that "more galleries from abroad will open in Italy in the coming years" as a result of the favorable tax environment.
The new Bologna location will be situated in the heart of the city's medieval center and will feature three exhibition rooms. The space will debut with a solo exhibition by abstract painter Matt Connors. Initially, the Bologna gallery will host a more limited exhibition schedule compared to Herald St's London operations, with plans for three to four shows annually versus the five to six staged in London.
This Italian expansion adds to Herald St's existing London presence, which includes the original location on Herald Street in Bethnal Green and a second space in Bloomsbury near the British Museum that opened in 2017. The Bloomsbury location anticipated the wave of commercial galleries that have since opened in the area following the pandemic, including Union Pacific, Hot Wheels, and A.Squire, establishing the neighborhood as an emerging gallery district.
