Cheim & Read - Artists. Cheim & Read - About. Cheim & Read was founded in 1997 by John Cheim and Howard Read. The gallery actively represents an international group of leading contemporary artists and estates, embracing diverse artistic practices, from painting and sculpture to photography and video. Artists represented have exhibited extensively in museums and galleries world-wide, and are regularly included in exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale, Whitney Biennial, Carnegie International and Documenta. Established in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood, Cheim & Read has an airy, 6,000 square foot building with multiple spaces, allowing for intimate or expansive exhibition formats.
Cheim & Read is characterized by its commitment to a rigorous curatorial model. The gallery publications complement our exhibition program. Since its founding, Cheim & Read has also specialized in the resale of select works from the 20th century, including artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cy Twombly and Andy Warhol. Cheim & Read. Cheim & Read - Galleries. Cheim & Read Owner Howard Read's Unusual Ceiling Installation. Howard Read, co-owner of Chelsea gallery Cheim & Read, and his wife, Katia, used to live in the kind of megaloft art dealers tend to favor, with enormous swaths of canvas-friendly white space. So when they were in the market for a new place, “the last thing we were looking for was a Federal-style townhouse,” says Howard. “The broker called about it, and we said, ‘Oh, no, that’s a dollhouse.
We need something with some kind of scale.’ ” But they were taken with an 1827 “wreck” in the West Village, which they’ve meticulously restored—and in the case of this drawing room, radically altered. One night, the Austrian artist Otto Zitko— who was in town preparing a show at Cheim & Read—came over for dinner, and “we had this idea to commission one of his wall drawings for the house,” says Howard. But Zitko “thought the walls were too busy and full of architectural whatnot: doorways or fireplaces or moldings.
Then he looked up at the ceiling.