BARNARD was founded in 2010 by owner and director Christiaan Barnard and is home to a select group of contemporary artists. The gallery has hosted a number of significant solo exhibitions by its stable of artists whose work has also been included in group shows at significant museums and institutions including amongst others IZIKO South African National Gallery, Cape Town; Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon; Pratt Institute, New York; Foto Museum, Antwerp; BOZAR, Brussels, Museo Carlo Bilotti, Rome; Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice and The Center for Book Arts, New York.

Art Fairs have increasingly become a feature of the gallery schedule with participation in the FNB Joburg Art Fair (2012-2018); Cape Town Art Fair (2013-2018); 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair, London (2016-2017); VOLTA NY, New York (2017); VOLTA Basel (2018) and AKAA (Also Known as Africa), Paris (2017-2018).

In 2013 the gallery extended its activities to include Barnard Publishing, an initiative aiming to further explore and support the work and careers of the gallery’s stable of artists through the medium of the book. To date these limited edition and signed publications have been added to the library collections of the University of Cape Town (UCT); Wits Art Museum (WAM), Johannesburg; Pratt Institute, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York.