After 10 years at New York's Luhring Augustine Gallery, Barnard grad Claudia Altman-Siegel felt ready to strike out on her own, so she relocated to San Francisco and opened Altman Siegel Gallery in 2009. She currently represents 11 artists, two of whom, Shannon Ebner and Emily Wardill, were included in the 2011 Venice Biennale. Recently, A.i.A. spoke with Altman-Siegel about the gallery scene in the Bay Area and her long-term plans for the gallery.

Your first paid gig in the art world was as a security guard—actually a fairly common phenomenon among art professionals. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
I worked as a security guard at Luhring Augustine. They had a show called "8 Painters" curated by Steve Wolfe, and they had a small Jackson Pollock in it, so Michele Maccarone, who was the director at the time, hired me to sit in the gallery and watch the painting for the month. I read 16 books, including War and Peace, and was a terrible guard. But after the month was over they hired me as the registrar, and then I was co-director in two years.


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