For almost a century, Cork Street has been the epicentre of London’s contemporary art scene. Situated moments from the Royal Academy, it is home to galleries that have launched the careers of epochal British artists – including Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore – and introduced international names to the UK, among them Joan Miró and Max Ernst.
Originally the site of the capital’s finest tailors, the area became a draw for art dealers when the RA moved to Burlington House in 1867 – the same year that Harper’s Bazaar printed its first issue – and was granted a lease of £1 per annum for 999 years. Because of the RA’s preference for traditional works, modern gallerists looked to the surrounding streets to set up shop, with many settling on Cork Street.
While the art world has historically been dominated by men, Cork Street’s women were already making waves by the early 20th century, with Peggy Guggenheim leading the charge. In 1938, she founded her first gallery, Guggenheim Jeune, at number 30, bringing pieces by artists such as Wassily Kandinsky to the UK for the first time, before World War II forced the gallery’s closure. In 1977, Lillian Browse (who was nicknamed ‘the Duchess of Cork Street’) established Browse & Darby at number 19, where she featured sculptures by Elisabeth Frink and paintings by Elizabeth Blackadder; in 1985, Victoria Miro opened her space at number 21, providing a platform for Marina Abramović’s ground-breaking performance art. “In my early years in London, this was where people gathered,” says Marianne Holtermann, whose gallery Holtermann Fine Art now occupies Guggenheim’s former address. “There was a café across the street called Queens, and I remember meeting Paula Rego and Victor Willing in there for coffee and cakes.”
Waddington Galleries in 1981
At the Mayor Gallery – one of the first to open on Cork Street, at number 18 in 1925 – women artists have been spotlighted from the beginning; its second-ever exhibition centred around the Impressionist Margaret Fisher Prout. The founder Fred Mayor also looked to the US for exciting creatives to highlight. “Galleries at the time were very British, and Mr Mayor was international,” notes Christine Hourdé, the gallery’s director. “He showed [Dorothea] Tanning, Eileen Agar and Pop artists like Pauline Boty.”
In the early 20th century, when most art institutions would simply present their stock, Cork Street galleries followed the European trend of holding a new solo show every two months – in the case of Waddington Galleries, which was founded there in 1958, across multiple buildings simultaneously. “At one point, we had five different spaces on the street with a rolling programme, all open at the same time,” says Florence Ritter-Scott, the director of exhibitions and communications at Waddington Custot.
Waddington, which consolidated its spot at numbers 11 and 12 in 1998, has an impressive roster of former staff, who have since launched their own spaces. Among them is Alison Jacques, who this month will return to Cork Street to open at number 22 with a display of textile sculptures by the 89-year-old American artist Sheila Hicks. “As a junior on the reception desk, I used to look out the window and imagine that one day I might have a space here. Many years later, I’m opening opposite Waddington and it’s a nice full circle,” she reflects. Jacques also had a stint working for Victoria Miro, whose nurturing approach she hopes to emulate. “It was great to have a pioneering female gallerist there when I first started – we’re going back to that history.”
In recent years, a growing number of international institutions have joined the band, bringing works by culturally diverse artists with them. In 2020, Frieze No 9 took a permanent exhibition space to display art from galleries across the globe. In 2019, Goodman Gallery opened its first outpost outside Africa, with a mission to “challenge the overarching Western-centric viewpoint”, according to its senior director, Jo Stella-Sawick. This month will see Tiwani Contemporary launch with paintings by the British-Nigerian artist Joy Labinjo. “It was important for me to send the message that we are able to work with artists from the African diaspora while being based in central London,” says the Tiwani founder, Maria Varnava.
’Making it: Women and Abstract Sculpture’ at Waddington Custot
This season, there is a crescendo of excitement on Cork Street: with Alison Jacques, Tiwani Contemporary and Stephen Friedman all set to take up permanent residence, the street will have the highest concentration of contemporary art venues of any in Europe – 17 in total. As Selvi May, the director of Frieze No 9, notes, “London is a cultural centre and the second largest art market globally, so it’s going to be very exciting.”
Jacques credits the street’s developers Pollen Estate (which renovated 60 per cent of its frontage between 2016 and 2017) with Cork Street’s flourishing Golden Age. “They made the brave decision to hold out for the right galleries; some of those spaces were empty for quite a long time, because they knew there would be a domino effect and more high-profile international galleries would want to come,” she says. “There’s a feeling of something new, that this is only the beginning.”
