Michael Rosenfeld Gallery was founded by Michael Rosenfeld in 1989; partner halley k harrisburg joined the gallery in 1992. Located on West 57th Street, the gallery moved to its current Chelsea home on West 19th Street in 2012. The gallery’s state-of-the-art, 6,500-square-foot space was designed by Richard Gluckman of Gluckman Tang Architects and occupies the ground floor of a Jean Nouvel-designed residential tower. 

Over the decades, the gallery has organized over 230 exhibitions featuring a diverse roster of modern and contemporary artists belonging to a variety of movements including abstract expressionism, surrealism, social realism, figurative expressionism, and geometric abstraction. Consistent participation in art fairs including The Armory Show, The Art Show (ADAA), Art Basel Miami Beach, Art Basel Paris, FOG Design+Art, Frieze Los Angeles, Frieze Masters, Frieze New York, and the Seattle Art Fair have expanded the gallery’s international audience. Landmark exhibitions at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery include African American Art: 20th Century Masterworks (a series for ten consecutive years from 1994–2003), uncommon threads (2008), Romare Bearden: A Centennial Celebration (2011), Nancy Grossman: Constructions from the 1960s (2014), Alma Thomas: Moving Heaven & Earth (2015), Alfonso Ossorio: Congregations (2016), Norman Lewis: Looking East (2018), Benny Andrews: Portraits, A Real Person Before the Eyes (2020), and Be Your Wonderful Self: The Portraits of Beauford Delaney (2021).

A member of the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) since 2000, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery has been instrumental to shaping a wide range of private and public collections across the United States and abroad. Institutional clients include the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY; the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. 

The gallery has also facilitated the placement of works in university and college collections, including the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME; the Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME; the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY; Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA; the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH; the Museum of Fine Art at Spelman College Atlanta, GA; Princeton University Museum of Art, Princeton, NJ; the Sheldon Museum of Art at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE; the Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA; the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; and the Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA.