New Director – and New Gallery in Marfa – for Gerald Peters Gallery

Mary Etherington is the new director of contemporary art at Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe, filling a post that hasn’t had a permanent director for several years. She comes to Santa Fe from Marfa, Texas, where Peters is also opening a new store-front gallery of about 1800 square feet. Called GP Marfa, it is located at 124 East El Paso (between the Foodshark lunch restaurant and Arber & Son Printers).

Mary Etherington, new contemporary director at Gerald Peters Gallery

Several years ago Peters closed the Dallas exhibition space which he had opened with Ted Pillsbury, so the re-entry into Marfa marks a new beginning in Texas. Within a month or so a new assistant director will be in place. In the meantime the surrealist paintings of Julie Speed, a Marfa artist, are hanging in the space, open now by appointment only. Once the season begins next fall, Etherington will be commuting between Marfa and Santa Fe.

A large installation by the sculptor Bale Creek Allen is already planned for “Chinati Weekend”, October 5-7, 2012.

Before coming to Gerald Peters Gallery Etherington had her own gallery in Marfa, and she also worked for the Judd Foundation as a tour guide. Her first gallery experiences spanned two decades on Martha’s Vineyard.

Marfa is known for its emphasis on conceptual and minimal art, and Etherington plans to include such work in her programing. In Santa Fe she will be keeping established gallery artists such as Beverly Pepper, Magdalena Abakanowicz and Wayne Thiebaud but she is also planning toadd artists that come from her prior gallery stable, including Peri Schwartz, Robin Reynolds, John Gibson, Clifford Smith and Aaron Morgan Brown. Currently, paintings of abstracted studio interiors by Schwartz are up at the gallery along with a series of etchings by Speed,  “Pirate Queen”.

It won’t be until late August that we begin to see the first of Etherington’s curated shows in Santa Fe; right now the gallery is honoring prior commitments including to Santa Fe painter Christopher Benson having his first solo show of realist canvases, reminiscent of Fairfield Porter. Plans for next season include a Judd exhibition as well as a large print show. Etherington also hopes to highlight the paintings of Julie Speed before a major museum traveling show of her work begins its tour at the Longview Museum of Fine Arts, Longview, TX (November 10, 2012 until Jan 1, 2013) and then moves on to the Nicolaysen Art Museum, Casper, WY (January 25 to May 5, 2013) .