Marian Goodman


Marian Goodman was an American contemporary art gallerist. She was the founder and owner of the Marian Goodman Gallery, a contemporary art gallery that opened in Manhattan, New York, in 1977. Considered one of the most influential gallerists in contemporary art, Goodman is known for introducing European artists such as Gerhard Richter, Joseph Beuys, and Marcel Broodthaers to the United States.
Goodman gained prominence in the art world in the 1970s and 1980s, a time when few women worked in this sector. Her gallery has represented a number of artists including Steve McQueen, Thomas Struth, Pierre Huyghe, Thomas Schütte, Lothar Baumgarten, Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Tacita Dean, Christian Boltanski, Annette Messager, Chantal Akerman, Niele Toroni, Gabriel Orozco, Maurizio Cattelan, Giuseppe Penone, Giovanni Anselmo, Jeff Wall, Rineke Dijkstra, and William Kentridge.

Early beginnings

Born Marian Ruth Geller in New York City on June 15, 1928, Goodman grew up on the Upper West Side and attended the Little Red School House and Emerson College. In 1956, Goodman was one of a group of mothers who successfully battled Robert Moses when he tried to expand the parking lot at Tavern on the Green, forcing him to build a playground instead.
Her father, Maurice P. Geller, a first-generation Hungarian-American accountant, collected art, particularly that of Milton Avery. Goodman became an art dealer as a new divorcée who needed to support herself and two children. In 1962, she organized a book of cheap prints of New York paintings to raise funds for the Walden School, where her children were students. In 1963, Goodman attended graduate school in art history at Columbia University. She was the only woman in her class.
Goodman and partners opened Multiples, dealing in artists’ editions, in 1965. Multiples published prints, multiples, and books by American artists, such as Richard Artschwager, John Baldessari, Dan Graham, Sol LeWitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Smithson, and Andy Warhol. In 1970, the year Multiples exhibited for the first time at Art Basel, Goodman published Artists and Photographs, a 19-piece portfolio exploring the way artists such as Ed Ruscha, Christo, and Bruce Nauman were incorporating photography into their work.
From 1968 to 1975, Multiples worked with European artists, introducing early editions by Joseph Beuys, Marcel Broodthaers, Blinky Palermo, and Gerhard Richter to American audiences. Multiples also operated a space on La Cienega Boulevard on the Westside of Los Angeles for two years in the 1970s.

Artists

Goodman has stated that she believes a dealer should be committed to working with an artist for fifteen to twenty years. As of 2023, the gallery mostly represents non-American artists, including:
Kentridge, Struth and Orozco, like most of Goodman's artists, joined her relatively early in their careers. One exception is Richter, who had three exhibitions with Sperone Westwater before deciding to show simultaneously there and with Goodman. After several years of this joint arrangement, he dropped the original gallery.
Goodman also represented American artists, including:
In addition to living artists, Marian Goodman Gallery handles the estates of the following:
  • Chantal Akerman
  • Lothar Baumgarten
  • Christian Boltanski
  • Dan Graham
  • Robert Smithson
  • Lawrence Weiner
Marian Goodman Gallery also formerly represented the following artists:
In an article in the New Yorker, art critic Peter Schjeldahl said "Goodman may be the most respected contemporary dealer in New York, for her taste, standards, and loyalty to her artists." Schjeldahl quotes Goodman's friend, the theorist and critic Benjamin H. D. Buchloh: "Her judgment is ultimately aesthetic, but she has a broad understanding of what a privileged existence allows and requires one to do. Her gallery has a certain subtle social horizon of responsibility." In Texte zur Kunst, critic Harmon Siegel wrote that she approaches art-dealing with "a sense that critique starts at home, that any art aspiring to confront social problems must also be self-critical, challenging the enterprise of the avant-garde itself." Michael Govan, director of Dia Art Foundation, describes her as one of the most powerful and influential dealers of the 20th century.
Described by Artnet as a "very private dealer", Marian Goodman was ranked 22 in ArtReview's guide to the 100 most powerful figures in contemporary art: Power 100, 2010. She was ranked 5th on the list of America's Most Powerful Art Dealers, according to Forbes magazine.

Later life

In 2012, Goodman received an honorary degree from the CUNY Graduate Center. In 2016 she received the Leo Award, presented by Independent Curators International. Goodman died in Los Angeles on January 22, 2026, at the age of 97.