Sardine Cofounder Talks Building Experimental Gallery in the Hamptons

When art director Valentina Akerman and her husband, artist Joe Bradley, opened a gallery out of a weathered Amagansett rental last summer, it wasn’t with a five-year plan or an investor pitch deck in hand. It began more as a lovingly improvised experiment, fueled by impulse, instinct, and a small army of artist friends who were game to join in.

Akerman named the gallery Sardine, partly for its beachy connotation, partly because she liked the idea that it could be packed up and moved anywhere—“like a can of sardines,” as she told Vogue earlier this year. (Last fall, the gallery did, in fact, pack up and head to Paris for a pop-up coinciding with Art Basel Paris. It is also currently organizing a group show at Le Consortium Museum’s summer space in Burgundy, France.)

Now in its second season, the self-funded summer project space has improbably grown into something of a Hamptons success story. The Summer 2025 program features a film series, jewelry and artist residencies, dinners with chefs Mina Stone and Elijah Tarlow, and four exhibitions that pair painters with sculptors.

The lineup kicked off in late May with a show featuring painter Julian Kent and ceramicist Isabel Rower. A show of self-portraits by Dutch painter Joline Kwakkenbos, accompanied by luminous sculptural furniture by Stefan White, followed in late June. Still to come: Tenki Hiramatsu’s dreamlike, Zen-inflected canvases in conversation with Nate Lowman’s light sculptures on July 18; and a final show on August 9 pairing Ida Ekblad’s exuberant impasto paintings with ceramics by Erin and Sam Falls and minimalist furniture by Brazilian designer Pali Cornelsen.

It’s an ambitious slate for what is still a pop-up in a 1700s farmhouse that Akerman—trained as both an architect and a philosopher—and Bradley also live in. The line between living space and exhibition, between design and fine art, is definitively blurred. As Akerman told ARTnews, the goal isn’t just to show work; it’s to build a space where people want to stay.

ARTnews caught up with Akerman to talk about building an experimental gallery in the Hamptons, what makes artists say yes, and the kind of shows that can only happen when the coffee table is part of the installation.

ARTnews: When you first started Sardine, did you have trouble convincing people to get on board?

Akerman: I think if I have one talent in life, it’s that I’m a very heart-forward person and a good communicator. I’ve always kept people engaged—people I know and people I’ve just met. I think they trusted my interest in them. Even artists I didn’t know personally, like Janice Nowinski, I reached out to cold because I’d seen her work and loved it. Same with Hadi Falapishi—I was so blown away by his ceramics and sculpture and painting. I just said, “I don’t really know what this is yet, but let me show some of these paintings.” And people said yes.

Joe—your husband—is listed as a co-founder. How did the two of you split the original vision?

He didn’t really expect it to become what it became. He thought we were just going to call a couple of people we liked, do a small thing. But when he saw what I had in mind, he was like, “Oh… okay.” [laughs] And I said, “Do you know me?”

Some of your early shows included work that blurred the line between art and design—painted furniture, ceramics, things that don’t necessarily fit the white-cube model. Was that always the point?

Yes, completely. I don’t come from an art history background—I studied philosophy and architecture, and I’m South American. If you’re a South American coming of age in the ’90s, all you talk about is modernism. And in South America, the line between object and art is really blurred—it’s about the environment, about space as a continuation of aesthetic life. Everything plays a role. I’ve always been fascinated by the objects artists make for themselves, for their families. They’re so unregulated, so full of the artist’s spirit. That’s what I wanted to show.

That spirit came through in Sophie von Hellerman’s show last year, which I hear was painted on-site?

Yes! I’ve known Sophie for a long time. I’d been to her home, seen the murals, the painted furniture. Years ago, I joked, “If I ever open a gallery, I want to do a show of your paintings on furniture.” When the time came, she and her whole family came and lived upstairs with us for six weeks while she painted the show. Nobody knew. It was kind of a secret. I wanted to keep things professional—but yeah, that cat’s out of the bag now. [laughs]

So you live upstairs, the gallery’s downstairs, and visiting artists sometimes stay with you?

Yes. It’s a bit unusual, but that’s the point. Sophie stayed. Hadi stayed. People come and sit and stay and talk. We make tea. It’s warm, and people linger. It’s not a sterile space. It’s a place you want to be in.

There’s a strategic angle to the location too, right?

Definitely. I’ve had a connection to Amagansett for years—it’s where Joe and I went on one of our first weekends together, and we owned a house here for over a decade. So I knew who was out here. Artists, of course, but also collectors, curators, advisors. People I’d met at parties, people I knew socially. I thought: if I open a gallery here, in the summer, I’ll get all of them. Way more than if I opened the same space on the Lower East Side on a random Tuesday.

And the house itself? How did you find it?

My friend Jane Wenner—who is just one of the most inspirational women I know—tipped me off. She said, “There’s this house, it’s very under-market, they’ll only rent it to you for a couple of years.” It was perfect. Not commercial, but workable. We live upstairs, we show downstairs. We rented it in May, and by late June, we were open. That became Gallery 13. Sardine was the bigger umbrella.

You mentioned that Sardine was meant to be temporary. Is it staying in Amagansett?

We’re here this summer, but I don’t know about next. From the beginning, the idea was that it would move—pop up in different places, do site-specific projects. That’s why it’s called Sardine. You can take it with you. It’s meant to be light and portable and playful.

Has the commercial side been hard to manage?

Of course. This isn’t an inexpensive project. But I’m trying to prove that there are other ways to do this. That we can be generous and collaborative and still run a business. For example, when I showed Julian Kent, I worked with his gallery, Kerry Schuss, to co-organize the show. Kerry was protective—Julian’s young, very talented—but I said, “Let’s do it together.” That made him feel more comfortable, and the show happened. It’s about respect, and making room.

Last question—were there ever any other names, or was it always going to be Sardine?

I haven’t told anyone this, but naming the gallery was kind of like naming our kids. We don’t really try out names—we just wait, and then suddenly, something comes that’s undeniable. Sardine was like that. It felt perfect. We’re at the beach, so there’s that. But I also wanted something that felt small, unpretentious, and fun. And something you could pack up and carry with you. Joe and I drew the logo at the kitchen table one night. People love it. It came from a very intimate place.