{"id":451063,"date":"2026-09-29T11:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T11:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/451063\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T11:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T11:44:08","slug":"austins-grayduck-gallery-closes-on-owners-own-terms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/451063\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin’s grayDUCK gallery closes on owner’s own terms"},"content":{"rendered":"

grayDUCK Gallery invited supporters to a wake Saturday night. But there wasn\u2019t much mourning going on inside the compact art space that had carved out a distinct niche on East Cesar Chavez.<\/p>\n

More than 100 people passed through over several hours, celebrating owner Jill Schroeder\u2019s 16-year run since opening grayDUCK in an even smaller space off South First Street. What made the evening markedly different from many creative-space farewells in Austin was that Schroeder got to close the gallery on her own terms.<\/p>\n

Schroeder and her husband, Mark, bought the property in late 2013, which protected them from being pushed out by rising rent, redevelopment or a landlord ending their lease. After a dozen years and more than 120 exhibitions, Schroeder said it was time to step away from the constant commitment needed to keep the gallery running to its potential.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t getting the same joy as I was before,\u201d Schroeder said the day after the going-away celebration. \u201cI was just ready for a change, ready to not worry about the gallery 24\/7.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schroeder had said from the start<\/a> that owning the building would give her more freedom over what grayDUCK could show and how artists could use the space.<\/p>\n

Looking back, she said that largely worked out the way she hoped. grayDUCK could reshape the gallery around exhibitions that might have been difficult to stage in a more conventional commercial setting.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really am proud of the fact that it could be a place where they could experiment,\u201d Schroeder said. \u201cWe could do what we wanted to it, and, you know, we built walls and took them down and did all sorts of stuff for the artists.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Chris<\/p>\n

Chris Cherewan looks at postcards from the gallery\u2019s previous exhibits at grayDUCK’s closing party.<\/p>\n

San Antonio artist Raul Rene Gonzalez<\/a> benefited quickly from Schroeder\u2019s artist-first approach. Gonzalez first showed at grayDUCK in 2014, while he was still in graduate school, and continued exhibiting there throughout most of the gallery\u2019s run on East Cesar Chavez.<\/p>\n

He said Schroeder gave him room to move away from the abstract work he was making early in his career and to develop more personal pieces about parenting, construction and labor, working across painting, drawing, mixed media, performance art and dance.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could really reach out to her if I had something that I was working on, just reach out to her like, \u2018Hey, how can we make this work into an exhibition?\u2019\u201d Gonzalez said.<\/p>\n

He said grayDUCK\u2019s ongoing, supportive approach gave him a consistent foothold in Austin\u2019s art scene and, when Schroeder told him she was closing, he initially felt like he was losing his \u201clifeline in Austin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gonzalez said that relationship also helped him become part of Austin\u2019s broader art community. Even though he lives in San Antonio, his work was regularly available at grayDUCK, and Schroeder made repeated trips south to see what he was working on and bring pieces back to Austin to show in the gallery.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, that was really important just to be able to have a place in Austin where I truly felt like I was part of the Austin art scene for a long time,\u201d Gonzalez said.<\/p>\n

grayDUCK developed a reputation pretty quickly as a reliable discovery space where collectors could encounter artists they might not otherwise have found.<\/p>\n

Austin collector Shalini Ramanathan and her husband started visiting grayDUCK at its original South First location. Ramanathan said they buy from artists who are working now in the communities where they live, and bought a number of pieces through the gallery over the years.<\/p>\n

She said Schroeder\u2019s personal point of view stood out, giving artists the latitude to push their work.<\/p>\n

\u201cJill has a very distinctive eye, and she\u2019s very sure of her own taste,\u201d Ramanathan said. \u201cThe programming is very personal. It reflects her interests and what catches her eye.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Yuliya<\/p>\n

Yuliya Lanina poses in front of her artwork during grayDUCK gallery\u2019s closing party in Austin on Saturday. <\/p>\n

Ramanathan said she was often surprised by how dramatically grayDUCK could transform its 1,100 square feet for a show. That could mean a variety of surprises for visitors; the couple would create large display structures if needed to fill the room with ceramics, host musical or performance art events, or build complex video installations to suit an artist\u2019s ambitions.<\/p>\n

At Saturday\u2019s gathering, looped animations were projected throughout much of the gallery\u2019s dimly lit back room, adding atmosphere to the gothic-surreal installations and paintings from artist Yuliya Lanina<\/a>, which took over the walls and floors of the main display area as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey really support the artist\u2019s vision for what they want to do,\u201d Ramanathan said. \u201cIt\u2019s always easy to kind of scale things back, and I don\u2019t think they\u2019ve ever done that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schroeder said she\u2019d been thinking about closing for a couple of years and nearly called it around grayDUCK\u2019s 15th anniversary last year. She kept going after discovering a handful of exhibitions she wanted to put on before closing the space.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just couldn\u2019t pass them up,\u201d she said. \u201cAs soon as I did all the shows that I really, really wanted to do toward the end of my career, then it just felt like it was the perfect time to stop.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schroeder and Ramanathan both said they see reasons for optimism in Austin\u2019s gallery scene despite grayDUCK\u2019s departure. Schroeder said the local art community has gone through cycles of galleries opening and closing, but feels more stable now, with strong support from the collecting community.<\/p>\n

Ramanathan said grayDUCK\u2019s loss will be felt, while pointing to newer and established galleries that continue to build audiences for local and regional artists. She singled out McLennon Pen Co., Ivester Contemporary and Northern-Southern, calling the latter\u2019s downtown home a \u201cdelightfully quirky space\u201d worth keeping an eye on.<\/p>\n

With her creative home now closed, Schroeder isn\u2019t planning to disappear from the arts community. She expects to join the board of Women & Their Work and said she would be open to curating shows elsewhere.<\/p>\n

But retirement will also mean making room for pursuits that got crowded out by the demands of running a gallery and staying active in the Austin fine art community. Shroeder\u2019s travel plans include a trip to Mexico to see the monarch butterflies at their wintering grounds, and she may eventually return to making art herself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to travel more and kind of rest up and see what else is out there,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"grayDUCK Gallery invited supporters to a wake Saturday night. But there wasn\u2019t much mourning going on inside the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":451064,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[39653,132,134,133,155146,155147],"class_list":["post-451063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-art-gallery","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-grayduck","tag-jill-schroeder"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/451064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}