Rena Bransten, an art dealer whose gallery was a fixture in the San Francisco art scene for more than 50 years, died Wednesday at age 92. Bransten’s daughter, Trish, told the New York Times that Bransten died after a recent heart attack and a fall. san francisco chronicle.
Bransten’s eponymous gallery was founded in 1975 as the successor to Quay Ceramics, founded the previous year by Bransten and Ruth Braunstein. Originally located in a 3,400-square-foot space in Union Square, the gallery is known for cultivating artists from California, with a special emphasis on women artists and artists of color.
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Over the years, some of Branston’s most notable artists have represented filmmaker John Waters, photographer Daoud Bey, conceptual artist Fred Wilson, poet and artist Lawrence Ferlinghetti, painter Liu Hong, multidisciplinary artist Lavar Thomas, and installation artist Amalia Mesa-Bains.
In 2015, the gallery was reportedly forced to exit its long-standing space after a tech company tripled its rent. san francisco standard. It first moved to Market Street and then joined a host of other galleries at Dogpatch in 2016.
In November, the gallery announced it would leave the Dogpatch space and adopt a “nomadic mode” due to declining sales and foot traffic, gallery director Trish told The New York Times. standard. She added that the gallery will host exhibitions at temporary venues around San Francisco.
“The economics of operating a brick-and-mortar gallery—once supported by a steady stream of sales, institutional partnerships, and direct engagement—have changed, requiring us to consider new models,” Renner and Trish Branston wrote in a press release at the time. “As John Waters observed when he was told we were closing our spaces, ‘This is the end of an era.'”
Rena Bransten was born Rena May Glazier on March 8, 1933 in New York City. Her father, William Glazier, was a partner at Lehman Brothers and served as a trustee of the Morgan Library and Museum. She attended the Dalton School, a prestigious private school in Manhattan, and earned a bachelor’s degree in art history from Smith College in 1954. That same year, she married John Brandenstein, who worked at her family’s coffee company, MJ Brandenstein & Co. After a year in Japan while John was stationed in the U.S. Army, the couple moved to San Francisco.
Reina initially became involved in the art world on a philanthropic basis, serving on the boards of the Oakland Museum of California and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She and John divorced in 1969, but they remained friends until John’s death in 2001.
Waters, best known as a filmmaker, told the outlet san francisco chronicle Branston was “hugely helpful” to his career as a visual artist, while she was “not interested in celebrities at all.”
“She’s a legend — not just in the Bay Area arts community, but nationally,” Waters said. “She was an elegant performer and a great art dealer who was ahead of her time.”
Bransten is survived by her three children: Peter (a partner at the law firm Glaser Weil), Trish (at the gallery since 1983), and David (a social services learning and development professional), and her five grandchildren: Rena Gallagher, Sam Gallagher, Kailey Jensen, Arielle Bransten, and Cecile Bransten, and great-grandson Melody Bransten Black Elk.
