By Ann Muder
As co-founder of the Caldwell Snyder Gallery in San Francisco, Susan Snyder ’81 promotes artists’ work and helps find special homes for their paintings and sculptures.
At the age of 23, Snyder, along with her business partner, Oliver Caldwell, founded their first gallery. Over four decades, they’ve expanded from a small boutique gallery to a large contemporary gallery featuring artists from the U.S., Europe and Latin America. They’ve also opened satellite galleries in multiple locations, including St. Helena in Napa Valley and Montecito in the Santa Barbara area.
Before she started her career, Snyder earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Columbia College. She says the time spent in the college’s art department influenced her career today observing different artists.
“It was a great community of talented faculty and students working in all different kinds of medum, including ceramics, drawing and painting,” she says. “It gave us experience with critiquing people’s artwork, which helped me to develop an eye for curating art.”
“(The Columbia College art department) was a great community of talented faculty and students working in all different kinds of medium. … It gave us experience with critiquing people’s artwork, which helped me to develop an eye for curating art.”
Susan Snyder ’81, co-founder of the Caldwell Snyder Gallery in San Francisco
After graduating, Snyder moved to the Bay Area, where she started working at a gallery close to Ghirardelli Square. She found art gallery sales were a natural fit for her.
“I loved meeting with artists and collectors, building those relationships and educating people about the art market,” she says.
While working at that gallery, she met Caldwell, who was working at another gallery. They decided to strike out on their own and opened a 600-square-foot boutique gallery in the Marina District of San Francisco, an area with restaurants and shops and bustling with tourists.
After growing their business, they decided to move downtown to rent a larger space. In 1991, they bought a building in Union Square in downtown San Francisco. The three-story building was a former restaurant that had gone into foreclosure. After the space was completely gutted and remodeled, it became their flagship location for the next several decades.
Snyder says they were in the right place at the right time to get the location they did.
“We wanted to have a place where we’d have lots of traffic, both walking and driving by,” she says. “We were grateful to find such a great building. We had been renting for a while, but as rent expenses kept going up, it made financial sense to buy.”
Today, the 9,000-square-foot space has become a landmark in Union Square. While it still gets people who walk in, most business comes from art collectors and designers in the Bay Area.
“Downtown San Francisco has been in transition since COVID,” says Snyder. “There aren’t as many people walking through this location, so our business tends to be more appointment-based.”
In later years, Snyder and Caldwell opened the satellite galleries in Napa Valley and Santa Barbara.
“Both galleries are in beautiful areas with lots of tourists walking through,” Snyder says.
For 20 years, they also had a gallery in SoHo, Manhattan, New York, before recently closing.
“The Soho gallery did really well, but rent kept escalating with big-name stores like Dior and Prada driving up the costs,” she says.
Over the years, the Caldwell Snyder Gallery has hosted 600 artist exhibitions and participated in art fairs all over the world. Snyder says they travel overseas at least once a year to meet with artists.
“It gives us the chance to meet with talented artists all over the world who create unique, beautiful works of art,” she says. “Most are mid-career and established professionals. We might get introduced to them through art fairs, or they may come to us to submit their work. We’re looking for artwork that we have an emotional connection with.”
Many times, those meetings lead to lifelong friendships as well.
“Some of them I travel with, we know their families, and we have dinners together,” she says. “We develop a relationship built on trust, and they know we’ll represent them in the best way possible.”
Snyder says the most rewarding part of her job is helping artists find the right place for their work. Snyder and her partner look for artworks for individual collectors and designers, typically for residential use in their homes.
“When we find the right work for the right space, it’s like magic,” she says. “Being an artist can be an isolating career. You’re not around a lot of people until you have a gallery exhibition and artist reception. There’s a lot of joy in telling an artist that we just sold the painting and found the perfect home for it!”
For more information about the galleries, visit www.caldwellsnyder.com.
