Donald Young opened his eponymous gallery in 1983 following his split from Rhona Hoffman, with whom he had co-run Young-Hoffman Gallery since 1976. Donald Young Gallery’s first location was at 212 West Superior Street in the River North neighborhood, just across the street from the Rhona Hoffman Gallery. Over the course of its 29 years, Donald Young Gallery hosted around 200 exhibitions, bringing to Chicago some of the leading figures in minimalist and conceptual art including Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Bruce Nauman, and Josiah McElheny. Romeyn 2012
Young was loyal to his artists, often representing them for decades. A respected dealer with far reaching connections—his network included leaders of major museums and galleries—Young was able to use his status to integrate new types of art and artists into the market. Metz 2012 In addition to showing large-scale installations and sculpture, Young was one of the first gallerists to achieve commercial success by showing video art. Among the video artists he championed, many of whom created in other mediums as well, were Bruce Nauman, Rodney Graham, Gary Hill, and Bill Viola. Romeyn 2012
Donald Young was expansive in his selection of art, gravitating toward both large-scale, visceral works and smaller, understated ones. In the archive are countless installation views of works that obtrude and dominate the gallery space, such as Ashley Bickerton’s massive wall apparatuses that take four men to hang, or Charles Ray’s lifesize sculpture of a glaringly nude man. Then, there are the works that are physically small yet colossal in concept and impact. Sophie Calle, a French artist who exhibited with Young throughout the 1990s and early aughts, exhibited one of her most iconic, and tiniest, works at the Donald Young Gallery in Seattle. The Sleepers, a six by eight inch print, looks miniscule on an otherwise empy gallery wall. But the print’s subject—hundreds of photographs documenting strangers sleeping in Calle’s bed—gestures toward a much more elaborate and psychological art practice. In the Spirit of Robert Walser, the gallery’s final exhibition before Young’s death in 2012, further exemplifies Young’s penchant for the marginal artistic genius. Comprised of the Swiss writer’s microscripts—novels written hastily on scraps of paper, envelopes, and receipts—alongside contemporary visual art inspired by or connected to the form, In the Spirit of Robert Walser is a prime example of how Young used his platform to bring mavericks into the spotlight.
In 1991, Young moved his gallery from Chicago to Seattle, Washington, where it stayed for eight years. In 1999, he moved the gallery back to downtown Chicago, where it remained until Young’s death in 2012.
