NAO Gallery director Karine Jouenne has announced that her gallery will be closing this fall. In a recent email, Jouenne said that NAO "will not be able to financially sustain the gallery beyond the end of the current show October 22. NAO gallery is going to be closing. It's a crunching decision as you can imagine."
Despite a recent renovation, NAO Gallery has struggled to draw viewers and collectors to their Albany Street location, and in early-September Jouenne made the decision to close the doors. She has not stated her plans for the future, but we expect her to remain involved and supportive of the arts.
NAO Gallery exhibited work by a variety of Boston artists, and has appeared frequenly in the pink pages of Big RED. Artists like Asuka Ohsawa, Debra Weisberg and Reese Inman were among many that called NAO home. The series of articles on 'Synthetic Art' that ran in Big RED & Shiny was expected to culminate in an exhibition, which will now relocate to The Rhys Gallery. Jouenne will not be a part of that exhibition.
NAO Gallery, a commercial space with a non-profit/incubator mentality, was a rare venture in Boston. The vacancy points more to the failure of the collector market than the creative energy of the city, and in this case both Jouenne and Boston must bow to defeat.
