Barbara Gladstone (née Levitt; May 21, 1935 – June 16, 2024) was an American art dealer and film producer. She was owner of Gladstone Gallery, a contemporary art gallery with locations in New York and Brussels.
Background Barbara Levitt was born in Philadelphia on May 21, 1935. She began collecting in the 1970s, alongside a job teaching art history at Hofstra University.
She was married twice, to Elliot Regen and Leonard Gladstone; both marriages ended in divorce.Engagements: Lili Abir, Richard C. Regen The New York Times, June 7, 1992. She had two sons, David and Richard Regen; her third son, Stuart Regen, died in 1998 at USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.Myrna Oliver (August 20, 1998), Stuart Regen; Producer and Art Dealer Los Angeles Times.
Career Gladstone Gallery In 1980, Gladstone gave up her job at Hofstra to open an art gallery in Manhattan,Linda Yablonsky (December 1, 2011), Barbara Gladstone The Wall Street Journal. where she began showing Jenny Holzer.
From 1989 to 1992, Gladstone Gallery collaborated with Christian Stein, an Italian art gallerist, on SteinGladstone. Located in a renovated firehouse at 99 Wooster Street in Soho, the gallery concentrated exclusively on rarely seen installation works by both Italian and American artists.Roberta Smith (May 11, 1990), So Big and So Dressed Up, New Galleries Bloom in SoHo The New York Times.
Gladstone Gallery staged Matthew Barney's first New York solo show in 1991 and has since introduced many international artists to an American audience.Jerry Saltz (July 23, 2020), What Is Lost With the Closing of Gavin Brown's Enterprise New York Magazine. Before moving to Chelsea in 1996, the gallery was located in Soho and on 57th Street in New York City. In 1996, the gallery teamed up with two other galleries – Metro Pictures and Matthew Marks Gallery – to acquire and divide up a warehouse at 515 West 24th Street. In addition, Gladstone Gallery operates spaces at 530 West 21st Street and at 12 Rue du Grand Cerf in Brussels.Roxana Azimi (May 1, 2008), Gladstone chooses Brussels for European gallery The Art Newspaper.
The gallery is also a prominent participant in many major art fairs.
In 2002, Gladstone brought Curt Marcus on as partner for several years.Carol Vogel (September 6, 2002), Gallery Consolidation The New York Times. In 2020, Gladstone Gallery merged with Gavin Brown's Enterprise and made Gavin Brown a partner.Jason Farago (July 20, 2020), Gavin Brown Closes His Gallery and Joins Forces With Barbara Gladstone The New York Times.
Beginning in 2018, Gladstone served on the board of the non-profit Artists Space.Artists Space Adds Barbara Gladstone to Board, Hires Heather Harmon as Development Director ARTnews, February 27, 2018.
Film production
Stuart Regen Visionaries Fund In 2008, Gladstone initiated the formation of the Stuart Regen Visionaries Fund at the New Museum, established in honor of her late son the art dealer Stuart Regen. The gift is meant to support a series of public lectures and presentations by cultural visionaries and debuted in 2009 with choreographer Bill T. Jones. It has featured prominent international thinkers in the fields of art, architecture, design and contemporary culture. Past speakers have included Jimmy Wales (2010), Alice Waters (2011), Maya Lin (2013), Hilton Als (2015), and Fran Lebowitz (2016, in conversation with Martin Scorsese).
Personal life and death From 2005 until 2012, Gladstone maintained a residence at 165 Charles Street, a residential tower designed by Richard Meier.Kim Velsey (November 29, 2012), A Done Deal: Barbara Gladstone Abandons Richard Meier's Glass Tower The New York Observer. She later moved to a 19th-century townhouse at 344 West 22nd Street in Chelsea,Sarah Medford (September 10, 2020), A Peek Inside the Elite Homes of the Art World WSJ.. which sold for $13.1 million after her death.Jennifer Gould (28 August 2025), The NYC home of late art-world legend Barbara Gladstone has sold for $1M over ask — after a fierce bidding war New York Post.
Gladstone died from an apparent stroke on June 16, 2024, at a hospital in Paris; she had traveled to the city on a work trip. She was 89.Barbara Gladstone, Influential New York Art Dealer, Dies at 89
References
External links Gladstone Gallery official site