Rosamund Felsen to Close LA Gallery After 38 Years

Los Angeles dealer Rosamund Felsen, who has represented major artists such as Chris Burden, Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley, and Jason Rhoades, will close the doors of her gallery after nearly four decades, though she will remain in business.

Her eponymous gallery’s next show, “Closing Celebratory Show,” opening July 9, will be its last. The show will include all the artists Felsen currently works with, such as Charles Arnoldi, Judith Barry, Morton Bartlett, and Joan Jonas.

Felsen had moved just last year to downtown Los Angeles after two decades at Santa Monica’s Bergamot Station. Felsen, who is in her early 80s, entered the art world in 1966, when her second husband, Sidney Felsen, co-founded storied printmaker Gemini G.E.L., and she helped manage operations, according to a profile in the Los Angeles Times. She later was a registrar and then a curator at the Pasadena Museum of Art, which would be renamed the Norton Simon Museum. She then worked briefly for another dealer before taking over his gallery space.

One of Burden’s signature works, his The Big Wheel (1979), was first shown at Felsen’s gallery; it consists of an antique eight-foot iron wheel that spins when powered by a motorcycle.

“It’s a different art world now,” Felsen told artnet News by phone. “On a couple of occasions, guys come in, well dressed, they say the same thing. I’m interested in buying art by emerging artists whose value is going to increase considerably in the next five years. These people don’t know how to really look. Curators would bring collectors by and get people to really look.”

“I just don’t want to deal with that anymore,” she said. “But I’ll be around.”