Goodman came to art dealing almost by accident, as a new divorcée who needed to support herself and two children.[4] In 1962, she organised a book of cheap prints of New York paintings to raise funds for the Walden School, where her children were students.[2][5] In 1956, Goodman was one of a group of civically engaged mothers who successfully battled Robert Moses when he tried to expand the parking lot at Tavern on the Green, forcing him to build a playground instead.[2]
Goodman and partners opened Multiples, dealing in artists’ editions, in 1965.[6] Multiples published prints, multiples, and books by American artists, such as Richard Artschwager, John Baldessari, Dan Graham, Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Smithson and Andy Warhol. In 1970, the year Multiples exhibited for the first time at Art Basel, Goodman published Artists and Photographs, a 19-piece portfolio exploring the way artists such as Ed Ruscha, Christo and Bruce Nauman were incorporating photography into their work.[2]
From 1968 to 1975, Multiples worked with European artists, introducing early editions by Joseph Beuys, Marcel Broodthaers, Blinky Palermo and Gerhard Richter to American audiences.[7] Her failure to secure Broodthaers an outlet in New York was the impetus behind her decision to start her own gallery, though he died before she opened with a show of his work in 1977.[5] She later discovered Lothar Baumgarten when she hired him to hang the gallery’s display at a Düsseldorf art fair.[8]
#MarianGoodmanGallery opened its first space in Paris in 1995. In 1999, a permanent exhibition space was opened in the Marais district. In 2014, the gallery opened its first outpost in London, located in a 11,000 square feet space over two floors inside a former factory warehouse at Golden Square. The architect David Adjaye is renovating the space.