“I’m obsessed with the Founders podcast,” gallerist Sara Lee Hantman divulged of the series that dedicates an episode to a towering entrepreneur of our time. “I’ve gone through maybe a hundred episodes by this point, and, so far, there have only been two episodes that profiled women, and they were Coco Chanel and Estée Lauder.”
Hantman is the founder of Sea View, a gallery based in a sunlit, pastel-tiled home in the lush green hills of eastside Los Angeles’s Mount Washington neighborhood. Artist Jorge Pardo originally conceptualized the building as a “social sculpture,” and the city’s Museum of Contemporary Art used it as an offsite venue in the late 1990s.
Rather than fashion and beauty CEOs, however, Hantman is more likely to derive her entrepreneurial ideas from her peers in L.A.’s art community.
Women-owned and -run art spaces have a robust history in Los Angeles. Regen Projects’s Shaun Regen; Diane Rosenstein; Nazarian / Curcio’s Shulamit Nazarian; Kristina Kite; Hannah Hoffman; Susanne Vielmetter; Carlye Packer; Lisa Overduin; Helen Babst; Honor Fraser; Anat Ebgi; Night Gallery’s Davida Nemeroff; Various Small Fires’s Esther Kim Varet; New Image Art’s Marsea Goldberg; Make Room’s Emilia Yin; and Château Shatto’s Liv Barrett are just a few notable examples from recent history—not to mention international women-owned galleries including Marian Goodman, Gladstone, and Sprüth Magers that have set up branches in the city.
Now, a new group of women-owned galleries are bringing a spotlight to the city’s relentlessly expanding art scene, and a renewed focus on how they are choosing to run a gallery their own way.
A new moment for L.A.’s women-owned galleries
Sea View is one of those newer names. Since its opening in January 2023, the gallery has become an anchor for arts in the area, particularly with the frequent neighborly gatherings planned together with artist Lena Daly, who opened the Wolford House project space a few doors away.
Compared to the row of white boxes that line Western Avenue or dot Hollywood and Downtown L.A.’s raw, industrial spaces that house galleries and project spaces, the location and domestic setting of both Sea View and the Wolford House more closely resemble the way that many in the Los Angeles creative community live, work, and get together.
Across town, Emma Fernberger recently opened her gallery in the center of the city’s blooming Melrose Hill gallery district, while Megan Mulrooney has taken over the gallerist Nino Mier’s West Hollywood storefronts.
“I feel very lucky [to be opening now]; it feels very of-the-moment for female gallerists,” Mulrooney shared as she was installing her inaugural exhibitions: a solo show of Piper Bangs, “Fruiting Body”; a solo of Marin Majic, “Dawning”; and “Saints and Poets,” a group show curated by gallery artist Jon Pylypchuk.
“I’m joining at a time when Sara [Lee Hantman] and Emma [Fernberger], among others, are opening in L.A., so we can share and be collaborative and uplift each other, which I think is important. It’s always been important in my career,” she added. Mulrooney’s first few exhibitions will also focus on women artists, with shows by Falon Stutzman, Anke Weyer, Mindy Shapiro, Maria Szakats, and Flora Temnouche in the works.
For Mulrooney, the city’s history of women in leadership positions in museums and cultural institutions is tied to its sense of place for galleries conceptualized by women. “There are so many female curators and directors in the major museums here,” she said, among them Ann Philbin (and soon, Zoë Ryan) leading the Hammer Museum; Diana Nawi at LACMA; Clara Kim and Johanna Burton at MOCA; and Cameron Shaw at the California African American Museum.
For Hantman, the approach taken by her gallery differs from that of her male peers. “Most galleries, which have been owned by men, have always been deeply concerned with scaling,” she said. She recalled an early visitor to Sea View, a successful male gallerist coming to see the space for the first time: “‘So,’ he asked, ‘Do you have any plans to scale?’”
Hantman laughed. “It was such an interesting way to say hello…Being a woman changes how you prioritize your business plan. I’m really interested in growth and building my gallery business, but I’m so much more interested in longevity and being happy while doing so.”
A close community
Hantman pointed to how many of her fellow women gallerists have looked after their staff in a way akin to family, and “take on a motherly role,” she said.
“The sensibility feels really different, and I’m excited to see that way of working becoming more commonplace,” she continued. “I’ve worked in all kinds of galleries, and, no matter what they say, they all want to become the biggest gallery. I want to become the biggest smallest gallery.”
The shift in priorities in the gallery business model is felt even more deeply in Los Angeles, a city known for entertaining at home, spontaneous beach days and road trips, and a healthy sense of balance in life.
For former New Yorker Emma Fernberger, Los Angeles is home to “a great spirit of collaboration among women. I don’t know if it’s endemic to being women or endemic to our generation, but it’s working around less ego,” she told Artsy. Fernberger opened her gallery in 2023—building a program that highlights the work of women artists, including Alina Perkins, Nicole Wittenberg, and Vicky Colombet—when she was just a couple of weeks pregnant. She recently gave birth.
“So many women [who are also running their own galleries here] have been so kind and so generous,” Fernberger shared. “They welcomed me to motherhood, to the sisterhood.”
She laughed and said, “I can’t think of any other industry where your competitors are sending you boxes of baby gifts or the name of a lactation consultant.”