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Previously Unknown Podcast Episode 14: Celebrating 40 Years with Maureen Paley

May 29, 2025

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On this episode of Previously Unknown, Maureen Paley reflects on 40 years of her groundbreaking London gallery in conversation with Matthew Higgs, Director of White Columns and founding curatorial advisor of Independent. Recorded live at the 16th edition of Independent this May, the talk traces her journey from a conceptual photographer in punk-era London to a pioneering gallerist helping to shape the city’s contemporary art scene. Paley shares candid insights into her early influences in New York and London, the indie spirit of her East End gallery, and why she still favors the intimacy of chapel-like spaces over cathedral-scale spectacle.

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Previously Unknown Podcast Episode 14: Celebrating 40 Years with Maureen Paley - Features - Independent Art Fair

Maureen Paley was one of the first to present contemporary art in London’s East End and has been a pioneer of the current scene, promoting and showing a diverse range of international artists. The gallery programme began in 1984 in a Victorian terraced house in London’s East End. Initially named Interim Art, the gallery changed its name to Maureen Paley in 2004 as a celebration of its 20th anniversary. Since September 1999 the gallery has been situated in industrial spaces in Bethnal Green. In July 2017 Maureen Paley opened a second space Morena di Luna in Hove. In October 2020 a third space, Studio M was opened in the Rochelle School in Shoreditch. From its inception, the gallery’s aim has remained consistent: to promote great and innovative artists in all media. Maureen Paley was born in New York, studied at Sarah Lawrence College, and graduated from Brown University before coming to the UK in 1977 where she completed her Masters at The Royal College of Art from 1978–80. 

Previously Unknown Podcast Episode 14: Celebrating 40 Years with Maureen Paley - Features - Independent Art Fair

Matthew Higgs is the director and chief curator of White Columns, New York’s oldest alternative art space. Over the past thirty years Higgs has organized more than 200 exhibitionsand his writing has appeared in more than fifty books and publications. He is currently a Contributing Editor at The Paris Review. Since 2010 Higgs has been the curatorial advisor to Independent and is, with Elizabeth Dee, the cofounder of Independent 20th Century.