Photo by Grace Roselli
Editor’s Note: This story is part of Newsmakers, an ARTnews series featuring conversations with the figures shaping how the art world is changing right now.
For Alissa Friedman, returning to Salon 94 was a homecoming. After more than a decade of helping to shape the gallery’s identity, Friedman left when founder Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn joined forces with Brett Gorvy, Dominique Lévy, and Amelia Dayan to form LGDR. (Greenberg Rohatyn later left LGDR, which is now known as LGD.) Friedman went on to help launch Stephen Friedman Gallery’s US outpost, only to watch that chapter announce it would close later this month. When she rejoined Salon 94 this winter, it coincided with something else: the gallery itself settling into a clearer sense of what it is in a post-LGDR world.
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I met Friedman in the Lower East Side, her homebase for more than 20 years, on a cold Friday morning where she arrived looking photoshoot-ready, wearing a Dries van Noten jacket, a subtle play on camouflage, and a chic green mohair overcoat. The conversation ranged from the early days of Salon 94 to hospital commissions, from Aboriginal painting to Korean design, and touched on why the old boundaries between fine art, craft, architecture, and design no longer hold.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
ARTnews: You were at Salon 94 for 15 years the first time around. Take me back to the beginning. What was it actually like then?
Alissa Friedman: I joined in the mid-2000s, when Jeanne [Greenberg Rohatyn, the gallery’s founder] was still running things very much like a salon in the literal sense. She was working out of her house on 94th Street, doing a handful of deeply considered projects a year. When we opened on Freeman Alley [a space launched in the Lower East Side in 2007], we were four people total. It was not Chelsea. It was not obvious. But the New Museum had just opened downtown, and it felt like something was shifting.
What mattered was that the program was never conventional. It wasn’t built around a single category or hierarchy. From the start, there was a real interest in artists and communities that were underrepresented in the New York market.
One of the things that feels striking now is how early Salon 94 was engaging with Indigenous artists, ceramics, and design. Today that feels aligned with the broader conversation. Back then, not so much.
It really wasn’t a big deal at the time. We weren’t doing it to make a point. It was just natural to us. We showed Australian Indigenous artists before commercial galleries here were really doing that. We worked with ceramic artists when ceramics were still fighting to be taken seriously as fine art.
Early on, the gallery was sometimes seen as eccentric. But I think what actually happened is that the culture caught up. Or maybe aligned is a better word.
That early openness seems directly connected to what’s happening now, where the lines between art, craft, and design feel thinner than ever.
They’re absolutely thinner. Not long ago, everything was siloed. Art stayed in one lane, design in another, craft somewhere else entirely. Now it’s much more fluid. Artists collect design. Designers work like artists. Collectors move between categories without anxiety.
And if you look closely, so many of these practices were historically marginalized: women, Indigenous artists, artists working with materials that were dismissed as decorative or utilitarian. So this shift isn’t just aesthetic. It’s cultural.
You left Salon 94 when Jeanne joined LGDR in 2021. Why was that the moment to step away?
My entire career has been about working directly with living artists and helping grow their practices. I knew that LGDR would focus more heavily on historical material, which is important work, but it wasn’t where I felt most useful.
Leaving was hard. Fifteen years is a long time. But Jeanne and I had always worked in a very complementary way. She had the advisory side, the secondary market. I loved running the gallery program. When that balance changed, it made sense for me to find a place that aligned more closely with how I work.
That led you to Stephen Friedman Gallery, where you helped build the US presence. What did that chapter give you?
It was an incredibly professional environment, with a phenomenal roster. One of the most satisfying parts was introducing artists who were well established in Europe or the UK but didn’t yet have a New York gallery. Denzil Forrester, for example, and Andreas Eriksson and Clare Woods.
It was also a chance to experiment. I started a performance program there, bringing in classical and jazz musicians to respond to exhibitions. I’ve always been interested in how other disciplines can activate a space.
Parallel to all of this, you’ve done significant work outside the gallery system, particularly in healthcare.
Yes. For more than a decade, I’ve worked on art acquisitions and commissions for New York-Presbyterian. We’ve placed thousands of works across multiple buildings and large-scale commissions including a a 136-foot long ceramic mural by Beatriz Milhazes large works by Kehinde Wiley.
It’s incredibly meaningful work. You’re thinking about art not as commodity or spectacle, but as something that people live with at vulnerable moments in their lives.
Coming back to Salon 94 now, the gallery itself feels different. The 89th Street space has a very particular presence.
I think of the building as a character. Every exhibition is in conversation with the architecture. It’s not a neutral white box, and that’s intentional. Each floor has a different atmosphere, almost a different historical reference.
Right now, we have three exhibitions up simultaneously. On the ground floor, paintings by Mantua Nangala and Yukultji Napangati, two major Aboriginal artists from the Papunya Tula art center. Upstairs, a solo showby Matthew Krishanu. And on another floor, a presentation by a Korean designer, Jaiik Lee, who works with copper, combining cutting-edge technology with ancient craft techniques.
The shows are very different, but they speak to each other. Someone might come in for one and leave thinking differently about another.
You’ve said before that one of the goals is for visitors not to know exactly what to expect.
Exactly. There’s value in that uncertainty, not knowing your lane. We’re even installing a small vending machine in the vestibule where visitors can buy small art objects. It sounds playful, but it’s serious, too. It’s another way of breaking down formality and inviting people in.
On Saturdays, we regularly have over a thousand visitors, many of whom have never been to a gallery before. That’s a responsibility, but it’s also exciting.
What does the next chapter look like, for both you and Salon 94?
More cross-pollination. More performance, music, design, and artists we haven’t worked with before. The gallery relaunched in the last year and a half, and it feels like it’s reaching its stride.
For me, coming back feels like a homecoming. I do my best work in a small to midsize gallery, where experimentation is possible and relationships really matter. That’s what Salon 94 has always been about.
