Mnuchin Gallery to Close After Death of Founder in December

The historic Mnuchin Gallery on the Upper East Side, founded by Wall Street pioneer Robert Mnuchin, will close at the end of February.

“For more than three decades, the Mnuchin Gallery has been privileged to present exhibitions that foster rare and ongoing conversations among scholars and audiences around some of the most important art of our time,” the gallery said in a press release Wednesday. “It is with gratitude and reflection that we announce the end of the gallery project following the death of Robert Mnuchin on December 20, 2025, a result that truly demonstrates that the gallery was, first and foremost, an expression of Robert’s passion and unique vision.”

The gallery’s final show, a series of panel paintings by Julian Schnabel, closes on Saturday.

Mnuchin, a key figure at investment bank Goldman Sachs in the 1960s and 1970s, died in December at the age of 92. Mnuchin entered the art world after retiring from finance in 1990, and two years later founded C&M Arts in partnership with James Corcoran. The name of the gallery has changed over the years, but the location has remained the same, at 45 East 78th Street, a townhouse owned by Mnuchin and his wife, Adriana. In 2005, he collaborated with Dominique Lévy and renamed the gallery L&M Arts. In 2013, Levy left and the gallery was renamed the Mnuchin Gallery.

as art newsOn the occasion of Mnuchin’s death, the late trader said in 2021 that it “took a lot of courage” to step away from the Goldman Sachs machine and examine whether his success came from his own abilities or from the institutions behind him, Daniel Cassady wrote in December. “I wanted to see what I could do,” Mnuchin recalled. And because no museum would hire someone without a formal art background, “the only option was to start my own gallery, which is what I did.”

Early on, Mnuchin focused on the Abstract Expressionists and other postwar artists, including Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning. But the gallery later expanded to include many female artists and artists of color. Over the past few years, the gallery has hosted exhibitions by Lynn Drexler, Joan Mitchell, Linda Benglis, Mary Lovelace O’Neill and others.