Addison/Ripley Fine Art

Addison/Ripley Fine Art at 1670 Wisconsin Avenue NW has operated as one of Washington’s primary contemporary art galleries since 1981, when Christopher Addison and Kristin Ripley established the gallery in the upper Wisconsin Avenue gallery corridor that has historically housed many of Georgetown’s commercial art spaces. The gallery’s nearly half-century of operation in the Georgetown commercial art market makes it among the most established contemporary art dealers in the Washington region.

The gallery program at Addison/Ripley covers the full range of contemporary American and international art: painting, sculpture, works on paper, and photography by artists who have worked with the gallery across careers that the gallery has in many cases supported from the beginning. The gallery model that Addison/Ripley exemplifies, the commercial gallery that represents living artists and presents their work to collectors and institutions, is the primary mechanism through which contemporary art reaches the market: the gallery advances the artist’s reputation through exhibition, press attention, and placement of the work with collectors who can sustain the artist’s practice.

The upper Wisconsin Avenue gallery corridor, which also houses Calloway Fine Art and the other galleries that have operated in the Georgetown commercial art market, provides Georgetown with a gallery district that the neighborhood’s educated and affluent residential community supports. The Georgetown collector, who often has both the cultural literacy and the financial means to engage with contemporary art at the commercial gallery level, is the customer base that the Addison/Ripley program addresses.

The gallery’s exhibition program presents solo and group shows throughout the year, with the gallery typically hosting six to eight shows annually.

Hours run Tuesday through Saturday. The Washington contemporary art market that Addison/Ripley has served since 1981 reflects the specific character of the Washington collector population: the diplomat who acquires American and international contemporary art as a record of their Washington posting, the government professional who has developed a collecting practice over decades of Washington career, and the academic and cultural institution staff who engage with the gallery program as a professional and personal interest. The gallery’s exhibition program, which presents the work of the artists the gallery represents in solo shows and group exhibitions, provides the Georgetown art community with regular opportunities to follow artists’ careers across multiple shows at the same gallery. The relationship between the gallery and its represented artists is one of the most important in the contemporary art world: the long-term gallery representation that allows the artist to develop their practice across multiple years and multiple shows is the foundation of the market for their work. The upper Wisconsin Avenue gallery corridor at 1670 is accessible from the commercial district below and from the residential Georgetown community above, which gives the gallery a position in the neighborhood that serves both the casual visitor who encounters the gallery during a Wisconsin Avenue walk and the committed collector who arrives specifically for an opening or a studio visit. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11am.