Closing Statement: Micaëla Gallery | Micaëla Contemporary Projects

For twenty-five years, Micaëla Gallery and Micaëla Contemporary Projects existed at the intersection of art, trust, and discovery. What began in 1997 in San Francisco's Hayes Valley as a beautiful and award winning gallery space, a room where artists and ideas could be encountered in person, grew into something rarer: a sustained community built on deep friendships with artists, collectors, and the people who understood that contemporary American art deserved to be seen, placed with care, and carried into the world.

From its founding through 2010, Micaëla Gallery presented contemporary artists alongside figures whose work had already shaped the history of American art; among them David Gilhooly, one of the great pioneers of the Bay Area Funk Ceramic Movement, whose irreverent and visionary ceramics challenged everything the art world thought art was supposed to be; and Marvin Lipofsky, who brought the Studio Glass movement to California, establishing the programs at UC Berkeley and the California College of Arts and Crafts that trained generations of glass artists and elevated the medium to the level of fine art. Among the contemporary artists who defined Micaëla from its earliest days was Robert Dunahay, an inaugural painter whose luminous and decorative works centered on the ubiquitous palm tree found in California, an image that resonated on multiple levels with private and corporate collectors around the world. And throughout the full arc of the gallery's life, Martine Jardel remained a constant and cherished presence, her rigorously conceived work on the abstract plane a continuous reminder of why the gallery existed in the first place. To represent artists of this range and stature was not simply a privilege, it was a responsibility, and one Micaëla carried with seriousness and devotion.

When the gallery's physical doors closed in 2010, the work did not stop. From 2010 through 2022, Micaëla Contemporary Projects carried that mission forward as an art consultancy, built on rigorous connoisseurship, refined valuation, and the conviction that the right work of art, placed with the right person, changes both.

Over the years, Micaëla introduced contemporary American art to the international art world, in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, in London, Basel, and Miami, forging connections that crossed borders and outlasted any single exhibition.

We are proud of the artists we championed, the collectors we served, and the friendships that made all of it meaningful. The relationships we were fortunate enough to build over these twenty-five years remain the truest measure of this work.

With gratitude and admiration for everyone who made Micaëla what it was.

Micaëla Gallery, 1997–2010 Micaëla Contemporary Projects, 2010–2022 San Francisco, California

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