How Berry Campbell Gallery Elevates Overlooked American Artists

Opening an art gallery is not a task for the faint of heart. The complexities of artist management, significant operating costs, and the ups and downs of the economy make for a challenging market to navigate over many years. However, this hasn’t stopped the many trailblazing dealers who have shaped the art world and market into what it has become today. Notable figures like Barbara Gladstone, Marian Goodman, and Paula Cooper have been instrumental in demonstrating the influence a strategic and thoughtful partner has on shaping the course of an artist’s career. Berry Campbell is continuing upon this legacy, and is making waves for its unique approach. 

Founded in 2013 by Christine Berry and Martha Campbell, the gallery has distinguished itself through its thoughtfully assembled roster of artists and estates that demonstrate a unique place within the realm of modern and contemporary art galleries. Having worked across a range of arts institutions before opening their own gallery, Berry and Campbell brought together an impressive mix of experiences and aesthetic interests into the program they are continuing to build. Whitewall sat down with Berry Campbell on the occasion of their recent and first exhibition with the estate of Mary Ann Unger, one of the newest estates to join the gallery’s roster, as well as how they began their journey as gallerists and what makes them unique in the marketplace.  

WHITEWALL: Can you share a bit about your backgrounds before founding Berry Campbell Gallery? What experiences led you to form the gallery?  

BERRY CAMPBELL: We both come from a museum background and have art history degrees; Martha started at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC and I worked my way up at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas. Following that I joined the Whitney Museum of American Art. At some point we both decided to segue to the commercial side of the business. We met working at a large midtown gallery where we were often teamed up on curatorial projects and art fairs. We had an agreeable and complementary working relationship, which continues to this day (many, many years later!).

Developing and Differentiating Berry Campbell Gallery

What was your impetus for starting the gallery? Were there specific gaps or opportunities you aimed to address in terms of how you developed your program? 

BC: We never planned on opening a gallery. Our former boss retired, and we were trying to think of our next moves, but we really didn’t think we would be able to open an art gallery without millions in the bank. We drew up a business plan, crunched some numbers, drank a lot of martinis, and decided we should give it a try. We are serious people, so when we decide to do something, we plan to succeed!

We knew that one mistake many galleries make is not having a vision. We both like history and wanted to tell stories that hadn’t been told. We didn’t intend to focus on women artists, but when you start looking at artists who have been overlooked, it tends to be women, artists of color, and older artists. 

“We both like history and wanted to tell stories that hadn’t been told,”

Berry Campbell

WW: What do you believe sets your program apart from other galleries, in the neighborhood as well as globally? How do you try and differentiate yourselves in such a competitive market? 

BC: We like to build artists’ legacies and in doing so, we grow markets. We are not interested in a one-off show of an artist; we believe in really taking the time to explore and do scholarship on the artists we show. As we raise markets, awareness for our artists and their contemporaries rises as well. We believe you can run a gallery ethically, do the right thing for artists, and still make money. 

“We believe in really taking the time to explore and do scholarship on the artists we show,”

Berry Campbell

WW: Curatorial stewardship and scholarship seem to be strong pillars of your program. Can you talk about your approach to curating exhibitions? 

BC: We are still old school in the way that we feel it is important to take time to research an artist’s CV and understand the artist’s work in order to be successful in selling it. We produce a publication for every exhibition we do; in fact, our Bernice Bing catalogue is now being sold in several museum bookstores. In terms of exhibitions, we are not only married to the period of work that the audience may know, but we feel it is important to go beyond and curate shows of different series and time periods. The artists we represent were not only good for a particular decade, but they were good artists their entire career.

WW: You have a broad mix of artists and estates in your roster. What coheres this group, and how do you maintain and grow it? 

BC: Growing is not a problem these days! There is so much good art in the world, and we literally have to turn down artists that we feel are worthy of representation because we can only manage so much. The coherence comes from deciding if the art is good and if we want to get behind it. 

Engaging in Global Art Fairs and an Evolving Gallery Scene 

WW: How do art fairs play into your program? 

BC: Art fairs have been important to us from the beginning. We understand it is important to get in front of clients who may not always come to New York. We started doing more regional fairs in the early years and now we participate in a mix of regional fairs and mega fairs. We always enjoy Frieze Masters London. It is an elegant and sophisticated fair with a range of extraordinary work that has been thoughtfully vetted. Art Basel Miami Beach is the pinnacle for us and we always sell well, see our clients, and meet new ones. We recently participated in Art Basel Hong Kong for the first time. We do a good amount of business in Asia, so we feel it is important to be visible on that side of the world. 

“Art fairs have been important to us from the beginning,”

 Berry Campbell

WW: How would you say the climate or ecology of art galleries has changed since your founding in 2013, compared to now? 

BC: When we started the gallery in 2013 the consensus was galleries and gallery spaces were growing in terms of number and size. During the pandemic, so many people suggested that we needed to close the gallery and that having a physical space was no longer viable. We both agreed that one of the favorite parts of our business is having a physical space to curate exhibitions and show art and we didn’t want that to change no matter what. Thankfully, we proved those people wrong and in 2022 we moved into a 9,000 square foot gallery (the old Robert Miller Gallery space) with 4,500 square feet of exhibition space, allowing us to really focus on our curatorial vision.

Spotlighting the Estate of Mary Ann Unger

WW: You recently started representing the estate of Mary Ann Unger. Can you talk about the process of bringing them into the program, and how this first exhibition has been received so far? 

BC: While our program is weighted towards paintings, we realized we could fully utilize our beautiful gallery space by showing sculpture. We were introduced to Mary Ann Unger‘s work by a curator colleague who shared his excitement in telling us about an under-recognized woman artist who did major sculpture in the vein of Eva Hesse and Lynda Benglis with a full body of work intact. We met the artist’s daughter Eve Biddle, who is also an amazing artist, and knew we were perfectly positioned to get momentum going with Unger’s work. We are showing Unger’s magnum opus about migration called Across the Bering Strait (1992-1993), which has never been on view before in New York City. The sculpture is really a full-scale installation taking up the entire gallery and is our most ambitious show to date.