Liza

Essers

1975–Present

Liza Essers is the owner and director of Goodman Gallery, a role she has held since 2008. Her tenure has marked a significant strategic and philosophical shift for the gallery, expanding its scope beyond national frameworks to build sustained, reciprocal relationships across Africa, the wider Global South and the Global North. Under her leadership, Goodman Gallery has been positioned not only as a market-facing enterprise, but as a cultural actor committed to long-term artistic development, critical discourse and the circulation of ideas beyond dominant centres of the global art economy. A management consultant with a degree in economics, she previously worked as an independent art advisor and film producer, notably of the Academy Award-winning film Tsotsi (2005). Essers has consistently appeared in the ArtReview 100 list since 2020.