Margery E. Goldberg
Margery E. Goldberg has been a major player in the Washington arts community for more than three decades as an entrepreneur and gallery owner, curator, activist, arts commissioner, guest lecturer, and wood and furniture sculptor. As a gallery owner and entrepreneur, Goldberg founded Zenith Gallery (1978), long one of Washington’s foremost galleries, recognized for its striking mix of high-quality contemporary artworks in all media that stimulate and engage.
Originally located on Rhode Island Avenue NW near 14th Street, Zenith began in a 50,000 square-foot community of 50 studios, also established by Goldberg at age 27, to serve as an affordable haven for artists to work, live, show their work and support each other. Studio Theatre and the Dance Exchange were part of that complex. In 1986, the gallery moved to 413 Seventh Street NW in Penn Quarter, and remained there until April 2009. Today, Zenith continues to show artwork via a small intimate gallery by appointment and its website, while also providing high-quality acquisition, consulting and commissioning services to residential and corporate clients.
As an activist and arts advocate, Goldberg founded the Zenith Community Arts Foundation in 2000, a non-profit 501(c)(3), dedicated to initiatives and projects that benefit artists and the overall Washington community. She has also served on the DC Agenda / Downtown Arts Development Task (1998 and 2007); as a commissioner of the DC Arts Commission from 1992-97, two of those years as treasurer of its executive committee; and on too many Blue Ribbon committees to mention. In 1986, she was a finalist in the Mayor’s Arts Awards for her contribution to the arts, and in 1980, she co-founded the Arts and Entertainment News Service, which videotaped and documented more than 30 arts, music and cultural events for WETA public television. Today, those videos serve as an archive of the Washington art scene, and over the years Goldberg has continued to document all the shows at Zenith Gallery.
Among Goldberg’s credits as a curator include 450-plus shows, including those for her own gallery as well as traveling exhibitions, multiple Art League shows and more than 100 corporate collections and projects, including major outdoor sculpture.
As an artist, Goldberg has created more than 300 pieces of sculptured furniture and neon, now in private and public collections throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe. In addition to showing her work in her own gallery, she has been featured in ten one-women shows in the Mid-Atlantic region and more than 40 group shows in 13 U.S. cities. While Goldberg continues to make art today, she spends much of her time running Zenith Gallery and focusing on her activism.
Goldberg received a BA in Fine Arts from George Washington University and studied woodworking, sculpture and silversmithing at the Rochester Institute of Technology where she was later a guest lecturer. She is featured often in the print and broadcast media.
