Galleries come and go; that much we know. Yet, in this city, there always seem to be more coming than going. Still, it came as a shock when Galerie Simonne Stern closed its doors in December 2002 after owner-director Donna Perret tied the knot with Compaq computer founder Ben Rosen and decamped to the Big Apple. The Stern was the city’s oldest serious contemporary art gallery, and for years the building just sat there, a dark and empty hole in the middle of gallery row. But finally, after years in limbo, the old Stern site has been reborn as Gallery Bienvenu. And while new galleries happen, the splendiferous sleekness of this one, designed by architect Lee Ledbetter, is a pleasant surprise, upping the ante on the proverbial white cube, local garden variety.
D. Eric Bookhardt, The Gambit Weekly (August 23, 2005) (New Orleans, LA) p. 44
