Gallery Agniel is going to Gotham

February 15 - 22, 2001

[Art Reviews]

Dealer's choice

Gallery Agniel is going to Gotham

by Ian Donnis
Sara Agniel was sitting outside her Wickenden Street gallery on an unseasonably warm recent weekday, telling me about plans to close the gallery, when an artist in her 40s stopped by, saying, "I hope you keep it going. I know how difficult it is to keep a small space like this." The affectionate remark reflects how a lot people feel about Gallery Agniel -- a favored destination on the Providence arts scene -- and it sparked a bittersweet moment for the 25-year-old art impresario.
Still, it's not really a surprise that Agniel -- nothing if not a charming and astute entrepreneur -- is turning her attention to the more expansive prospects of private by-appointment sales in New York City, while planning to maintain a similar part-time presence in Rhode Island. Agniel, who hopes to serve as an ambassador for local artists, appreciates the fact that many will be saddened when her gallery closes at the end of February, perhaps renewing the same void for emerging artists that she once sought to fill.
But the same people, she says, "should be happy for these artists, that this next phase of the gallery is going to offer them a broader sphere in which to be seen and to sell." And even with the gallery's closing, Agniel says, "there is an understanding now that art can be sold in this market, that people don't have to go to Boston or New York to get great art, or to see great art. Galleries had come and gone [before], and the public understanding was that they hadn't sold enough to make their overhead and a viable living. I think the market is more open now. I feel like that was a breakthrough that we made at this space."
A native of Washington, DC, and Westport, Connecticut, Agniel got seriously excited about art when she served as gallery coordinator at the Sarah Doyle Women's Center during her senior year at Brown University. As a student of art history and comparative literature, she realized that art is a useful prism for viewing a variety of topics, from poetry and film to a bit of philosophy and economics. Agniel fared well selling art out of her Wickenden Street apartment and, less two years after graduation, she opened her own gallery up the hill at 460 Wickenden Street, in March 1999.
With regular openings, an eclectic array of content, and a month-long focus on artists like Richard Gann, Holly Laws, and Entang Wiharso, Gallery Agniel proved to be a prime destination on the local arts scene. It didn't hurt that the gallery is situated on Wickenden Street, an idiosyncratic stretch that draws more lingering foot traffic than the envisioned arts and entertainment district in Downcity. But the driving force behind the gallery's success was really Agniel -- an articulate and confident scene-maker -- who pitched art to collectors and hosted hipsters for the initial season of the Picture Start independent film series with equal aplomb. As a young woman with a plan, Agniel didn't blink at the prospect of putting in long hours and taking low wages if that was what was necessary to make her gallery a hit.
"She literally put some money into some artists' pockets," says Umberto "Bert" Crenca, a painter and the artistic director of AS220, the nonprofit arts space on Empire Street. "She did a great job identifying and matching artists with patrons, better than many who have tried that in town. I'm really sad to hear that Sara's closing. She was really aggressive in making her gallery work. It's going to sting."
Truth to be told, Agniel's decision to relocate isn't entirely a business decision; her boyfriend lives in New York. But she says she wouldn't be making the move if she didn't want to pursue business opportunities there, and that the parameters of Gallery Agniel -- basically the size of a large living room -- had begun to feel like a constraint. Meanwhile, Agniel says, she realized that a large portion of her sales came in private transactions that often had little relation to what was hanging in the gallery.
She hopes to eventually open a public space in New York, but intends to focus in the short term on growing her business and determining how to take it to the next step. "The question is, `How I do things here, can I do it the same way in New York?' " Agniel says. "It's going to be an exploration of how to make it happen." At the same time, she plans to continue curating project-based exhibitions in Providence, such as a visual arts companion to the women's playwriting festival at Perishable Theatre in May and an annual fund-raiser for the West Broadway Neighborhood Association.
A self-described nerd with a penchant for "studying things that are sort of unknowable," Agniel has role models for self-invention in her parents, who, she says, fluidly changed their careers many times (her mother, for instance, gave up teaching to go to law school and become a lawyer at a later-than-conventional age). At the same time, promoting art seems like a strong match for Agniel's interests. "If I hadn't become a gallerist, I might have become a teacher," she says. "I like to influence peoples' lives by giving them information that they don't have access to."
Although Providence continues to draw new residents because of national plaudits about the local arts scene, for-profit galleries have had a tough time surviving. "I think it's a basic law of supply and demand," Agniel says. "We have an abundance of supply in a very small market." But based on her own experience, she's convinced that running a successful local gallery is viable, if the owner is willing to make certain sacrifices.
The Bush Gallery on Weybosset Street has gained attention, but Downcity's evolution as an envisioned arts and entertainment district continues to unfold at a slow pace. For now, there's still not the critical mass of residents to support more galleries, let alone more prosaic businesses. "It's like a chicken and egg thing," says Agniel, who rebuffed private overtures to move her gallery to Downcity. She likes the bandied-about idea of a gallery district in the area, but adds, "The question is, `Who's going to go and do it?' "
When it comes to the arts, "I think that people in Rhode Island tend to think too small and that we don't have to think small," Agniel says. She points to a places that are far less scenic than Providence -- such as the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, Massachusetts -- that have become destinations because of the arts, and emphasizes the local strengths here in art, architecture and scholarship. "It should be happening [here] and it could be happening."
Ian Donnis can be reached at idonnis[a]phx.com.