Features An anniversary exhibition spotlights the artists who’ve made the gallery one of Lower Manhattan’s most adventurous success stories.

October 30, 2026 — 5 min read

Left to right: Olivia Smith, David Deutsch, and Chris Dorland (photo Don Stahl, courtesy Magenta Plains)

Olivia Smith had a thriving career running Exhibition A on the Upper East Side, a company that sells original contemporary art editions, when artists Chris Dorland and David Deutsch approached her in 2015 about opening a gallery on the Lower East Side.

Smith had worked with hundreds of artists producing limited edition prints, but she had never managed a commercial gallery or negotiated with museums before. Still, she felt a kinship with Dorland and Deutsch, who found a ground-floor storefront on Allen Street and needed help programming it. First they had to agree on a name, as long as it wasn’t their own on the door.

“We wanted something expansive and open-ended,” Smith told Hyperallergic .…