Marian Goodman, art’s quiet matriarch, hopes the market cooperates

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Randy Kennedy

Marian Goodman, between paintings by Julie Mehretu, in her gallery on West 57th Street. Credit James Estrin/The New York Times

NEW YORK---At 88, Ms. Marian Goodman carries herself with a quiet, unassailable authority that makes you think she could be a retired banker or New York City schools chancellor or a high-level diplomat, a job she aspired to before falling under art’s spell as a young, Upper West Side mother in the early ’60s. Her gallery enters its 40th year next month as one of the most powerful in the business, despite having operated in few of the ways other galleries have as the contemporary art world morphed into the sleek financial behemoth it is now. Long on West 57th Street, it never branched out to SoHo or Chelsea. It never became a player in the auction market. [link]