Dealer Nino Mier, who went into business in Los Angeles in 2015 and rapidly expanded to Brussels and New York, is planning to close his three galleries in L.A., plus a project space, according to sources close to the firm and one artist on its roster. Mier’s five other spaces, in Brussels and New York, will remain in operation.
Asked to comment, a gallery spokesperson said in an emailed statement, “As Nino Mier Gallery increasingly focuses on its operations in New York and Brussels, we are strongly considering closing some of our gallery space in Los Angeles and will share more in the near future.”
The move comes on the heels of an investigation by Julia Halperin in the Art Newspaper last month in which four former gallery staffers said that they misreported invoice amounts to artists in order to keep funds from sales with the gallery. The alleged discrepancy amounted to $31,000 across 21 transactions. Mier declined to comment for that story, and a spokesperson said that the business “has undertaken an independent review of its records and will subsequently take any corrective action necessary.”
“It feels especially repulsive to be lied to, manipulated and robbed by someone whose business model relied entirely on making you believe that they cared about you,” artist Louise Bonnet told the Art Newspaper. Bonnet, who was among those allegedly affected, left the gallery in 2022 for Galerie Max Hetzler and Gagosian.
The exterior of Nino Mier’s Glassell Park project space. Photo via Wet Paint.
This month, painters Jake Longstreth and Dashiell Manley decamped from the gallery. However, Mier continues to work with acclaimed artists such as Nicola Tyson, André Butzer, Jansson Stegner, and Joanne Greenbaum.
In a 2022 profile I wrote of Mier for Artnet News, the dealer addressed rumors of unsavory business practices at his gallery. “I think they assume this rise and this success could possibly have come by someone else’s hand, which is just not true,” he said. “I just know that if you take the time to get to know me, I think you would think very differently of me.”
Later that year, he opened his first space in New York, in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood, and shortly after, inaugurated another to the south, in gallery-rich TriBeCa.
Mier recently shuttered a project space in Cologne, Germany, called Salon Mier. Last year, he closed one in Marfa, Texas.
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