Marian Goodman, the art dealer admired for her fierce loyalty to artists and her lifelong refusal to chase fashion, either aesthetic or commercial, died on Thursday in a Los Angeles hospital. She was 97. Her death was reported by her gallery, which did not cite a cause.
Goodman was not a dealer who followed the market; she helped form it, often by ignoring it altogether. In 1977, at the age of 49, she opened the Marian Goodman Gallery in Midtown Manhattan with an exhibition by the Belgian artist and poet Marcel Broodthaers. It was a successful start. Broodthaers’ intellectually exacting, conceptually thorny work reflected Goodman’s instincts perfectly: demanding, rigorous, and quietly radical.
Over the next five decades, she would go on to champion and sustain the careers of many of the most significant artists of her time, particularly European figures whose importance had not yet been fully recognised in the United States.
“In a statement, the gallery announced, “With great sorrow, the Goodman family and the Marian Goodman Gallery announce the passing of Marian Goodman, who died peacefully of natural causes on Thursday, January 22, 2026”.
To her artists, Goodman was more than a representative. She was an advocate in the deepest sense, steadfast, attentive, and willing to invest time and belief where others hesitated. She played a crucial role in introducing a generation of European avant-garde artists to American audiences, helping to reshape the intellectual contours of contemporary art. Yet what truly set her apart was her understanding of what a gallerist owed the work itself.
Curious by nature and pluralistic in outlook, Goodman resisted narrow definitions of success, supporting her artists not only through sales but through sustained engagement with museums, institutions, and non-profit spaces.
She once described her affinities plainly: “It is among the artists whose work I like that I have found the qualities I value from my own experience: a humanistic concern, a culture-critical sense of our way of life, a dialectical approach to reality, and an artistic vision about civic life.” It was less a manifesto than a statement of lived principle.
When Goodman launched her gallery in New York in the late 1970s, the art world was still overwhelmingly male. She had already co-founded Multiples, Inc. in the 1960s, and the gallery grew out of that experience—partly from a desire to build a genuinely transatlantic programme, one that placed American and European artists into sustained dialogue. Europe remained central to her thinking, and in 1995 she opened a Paris space in the Marais, cementing the gallery’s international footing.
As the gallery evolved, Goodman steered its continuity by appointing a partnership team, Rose Lord, Junette Teng, Emily-Jane Kirwan, and Leslie Nolen, who worked closely with her for decades. Together, they carried forward the values she established, overseeing milestones including the gallery’s move to its Tribeca flagship in 2024 and the opening of its Los Angeles space the year before.
The gallery statement stated, “A celebration of Goodman’s life is being planned. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Andrew Goodman Foundation or the Humane Society of America”.
Goodman leaves behind a gallery model that is seriously principled. With an engagement, both patient and expert.
Marian Goodman’s Gallery Roster Included:
Gerhard Richter: Renowned German painter.
Anselm Kiefer: major contemporary German artist known for monumental, heavily textured paintings, sculptures and installations
John Baldessari, a conceptual artist blending photography, text, and pop culture imagery
Pierre Huyghe: Known for complex, environmental installations.
Steve McQueen: Turner Prize-winning artist and filmmaker.
Tacita Dean: Celebrated for her work in film and drawing.
William Kentridge: Known for animated drawings and films.
Maurizio Cattelan: Renowned for provocative sculptural works.
John Baldessari: A major figure in conceptual art.
Thomas Struth: Renowned for large-scale, detailed photography.
Giuseppe Penone: Key figure in the Arte Povera movement.
Julie Mehretu: Famous for large-scale, abstract paintings.
Robert Rauschenberg: A major 20th-century American artist.