How Ken Hashimoto Harman Went from Waiting Tables to Running a Small Gallery Empire
Portrait of Ken Hashimoto Harman. Courtesy of Hashimoto Contemporary.
Ken Hashimoto Harman makes it look simple. Some 14 years since he founded his first gallery, the easygoing multihyphenate now juggles an impressive array of projects without seeming to break a sweat.
These include both the contemporary art project Spoke Art Gallery, specializing in pop culture–inspired art and illustration, and the tastemaking gallery Hashimoto Contemporary—spanning New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Harman also finds the time to lead the nomadic Harman Projects and his publishing company Paragon Books, all while maintaining various film and art curatorial projects.
Harman jumped headfirst into the commercial art world in 2010 while he was waiting tables at Oakland mainstay Pizzaiolo. “I had $3,000 in my checking account, signed a lease on this 250-square-foot space, then worked the gallery during the day, waited tables at night,” Harman told Artsy over a stacked plate of a Greek-inspired breakfast at Kiki’s on New York’s Lower East Side. Thus, Spoke Art Gallery was born, rapidly gaining recognition in the Bay Area for its pop culture–inspired shows. Three years later, he decided to enter the world of fine art by launching Hashimoto Contemporary in Jessica Silverman’s former space in San Francisco’s lower Nob Hill. Harman’s mission has always been straightforward: Supporting his friends, artists, and community has fueled the art world dynamo for the past 14 years.
Portrait of Dasha Matsuura and Jennifer Rizzo. Courtesy of Hashimoto Contemporary.
“[San Francisco] was just a chance for me to give my friends shows,” Harman said. “New York was a chance for me to give my friends shows in New York, and Los Angeles was very much the same thing—opening the L.A. space was to sort of get more opportunities for our artists.”
Today, Hashimoto Contemporary works across these three cultural hubs in the U.S., where its program operates around 50 shows a year. Last year the gallery announced its first two partners: Dasha Matsuura, who now runs the L.A. location, and Jennifer Rizzo—Harman’s wife—who now runs the New York location. This week, the gallery will celebrate its 10th anniversary with a show in San Francisco featuring 52 artists, including Brett Amory, Seonna Hong, and Jeffrey Cheung.
San Francisco start-up
At 18, Harman graduated from high school and started working at Whole Foods in 2007. It was during this time that he became captivated by street artists who were creating work dedicated to a young junior senator from Chicago by the name of Barack Obama. Inspired by the political and creative fervor at the time, Harman launched his own art blog, the Obama Art Report, where he interviewed artists and wrote about the artwork he encountered. This initiative led to significant recognition, including being flown to New York for a live on-air interview for MSNBC, along with several other interviews by the Wall Street Journal and NPR, among others.
While continuing to write about art for Hi Fructose Magazine and working in the restaurant industry—“I’ve done everything there is to do in a restaurant,” he underscored—Harman founded Spoke Art Gallery in 2010. The concept for his breakthrough (and second-ever) show, “Bad Dads,” originated from a movie night at the restaurant where he worked. Harman adapted the idea to focus on art inspired by Wes Anderson’s filmmaking, notable for the father figures in films such as The Royal Tenenbaums and Fantastic Mr. Fox.
“Because the pressures were less, we had so much freedom, and we could take so many risks,” he said. The exhibition struck such a note that it was reiterated in subsequent years, and Anderson himself, as well as his regular castmember Jason Schwartzman, attended it in New York.
As his reputation grew, Harman seized an opportunity to pivot, opening Hashimoto Contemporary, a physical gallery in lower Nob Hill, bordering the Tenderloin neighborhood. The gallery opened with a pair of shows in March 2014: a solo exhibition by Crystal Wagner and a two-person exhibition featuring Jessica Hess and GATS.
His early experiences in San Francisco were undoubtedly shaped by the local gallery community, influenced by its strong female gallerists and community-oriented mindset. “For starters, one thing that I’ve always loved about the Bay is all of the best dealers are women,” Harman said. “In San Francisco, because it’s more of a regional market, people are just a lot more supportive,” he added.
Bicoastal bridges
Seonna Hong, installation view of “Murmurations” at Hashimoto Contemporary in New York, 2023. Courtesy of Hashimoto Contemporary.
By 2016, Harman made the decision to open a branch in New York. “My artists weren’t getting shows in New York because there was, especially 10 years ago, very much a West Coast/East Coast divide in the art scene,” said Harman. “There were very few galleries in New York championing Bay Area artists, so I opened the space in New York so that our San Francisco artists could have New York shows. Jeffrey [Cheung]’s first show, for example—the first New York show—was with me.”
Like his approachable personality, Harman aims to make his galleries as welcoming as possible. This authenticity manifested in the programs’ focus on showcasing artists whose voices are otherwise marginalized. “So much of our early experiences as a gallery involved showcasing queer artists and artists of color,” the gallerist said.
Now, eight years later, Hashimoto Contemporary is well ensconced in the Lower East Side, where the gallery has become a bastion for the neighborhood, steadfastly adhering to Harman’s mission for boundary-pushing art and artists. The gallery is currently gearing up for a solo exhibition by miniature sculptor Abigail Goldman on August 10th. Harman also opened a gallery in L.A. in 2021, located in the heart of the city’s arts district. And in 2023, the San Francisco flagship relocated to the Minnesota Street Project in the city’s north: an arts center bustling with 14 fine art galleries, including Eleanor Harwood Gallery, Anglim/Trimble, Bass & Reiner, and Casemore Gallery.
Going global
“I didn’t get into this to make money,” Harman said. “My aim was always to provide a platform for artists. If I can manage a barely livable wage while doing so, that’s enough for me. Continuing this mission—to uplift and support artists—is what truly matters.”
Hashimoto Contemporary is extremely active on the international stage, establishing a presence during Miami Art Week at Context: Art Miami and Miami Art Project since the very beginning, and maintaining a steady art fair schedule ever since. “My view on art fairs is that they’re a really expensive business card,” Harman said. “If I can break even, that’s great. The point of the art fair is to get my artists out there and to get them an opportunity to show work, to sell work, [and] to meet new collectors.”
Over the years, the gallery has participated in ZONA MACO in Mexico City, Future Fair in New York, and more. Most recently, the gallery participated in Taipei Dangdai Art & Ideas, where it featured works by artist Bianca Nemelc. At this year’s Future Fair in New York, one of the artists in the gallery’s three-person booth, Angela Fang Zirbes, won the Future Fair Artist Prize, awarding her a spot at the Virreina Artist Residency. “I have so much faith and confidence in her and in the future of her career,” Harman said.
Set up to thrive
Installation view of the inaugural group exhibition at Hashimoto Contemporary in the Minnesota Street Project, 2023. Courtesy of Hashimoto Contemporary.
A decade in, Harman is in a reflective mood. Success for him, as a mid-size gallery owner, comes through seeing his artists thrive.
“Even though we have multiple locations, we’re not a blue-chip space,” Harman said. “Ultimately, I always want to see what’s best for my artists. The sad reality of our position in this middle tier is if I’m good at my job, bigger galleries might pick up my artist. It’s bittersweet because I want to see them succeed. It can be a little sad sometimes, but at the end of the day, I take comfort in knowing that it simply means I did my job well.”
And a time when the mid-size and emerging tiers of the gallery world are facing pressures—particularly around him in downtown New York—Harman remains committed to his career-long mission: “As long as we can continue to provide talented artists with the shows they need and the platform they deserve, that’s what really matters,” he said.
