This Spring, One Mega-Dealer Dominates N.Y.C. Museums

New York Times

27-04-2025

Earlier this month the Whitney Museum of American Art celebrated the opening of an exhibition by the painter Amy Sherald — Michelle Obama's official portraitist — with a champagne toast over lush arrangements of daffodils and yellow ranunculus.
At the Museum of Modern Art, another recent blowout event honored an ambitious retrospective of the revered painter and sculptor Jack Whitten, who died in 2018.
Further uptown, the multimedia art star Rashid Johnson took over the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum with a solo show of almost 90 works and live performances. And next month, the conceptual artist Lorna Simpson will debut a major show of paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
What these in-demand artists have in common is their deep-pocketed Swiss dealer, Hauser & Wirth. The gallery's artists are so dominant in New York's leading museums this season that some in the art world are calling it 'Hauser spring.'
Hauser & Wirth's prominence comes at a time when the most powerful dealers in the commercial art world play an increasingly large role in helping support the city's ambitious museum shows. A New York Times analysis of solo exhibitions since 2019 shows that out of 350 exhibitions by contemporary artists, nearly 25 percent went to artists represented by just 11 of the biggest galleries in the world.
And within that tiny slice of the art market, the most exhibitions came from Hauser & Wirth artists, with 18 shows over the last six and a half years, outpacing even established names in the American art world like Larry Gagosian and David Zwirner.
Some experts said the overlap between mega-galleries and major museums is to be expected, considering both groups are eager to spotlight the field's most influential figures. 'These mega-galleries obviously approach artists who are in some ways established,' said Antwaun Sargent, a director at Gagosian.
But others warn that such closeness can raise questions of conflicts of interest, since museum shows typically lift the reputations of artists and the prices of their work — and these exhibitions can help their galleries profit handsomely.
It represents a shift for museums, which receive their tax-exempt nonprofit status to collect and study art, and present what they believe is important work to the public. For many decades, these institutions were wary of partnerships with the commercial art world.
But arts organizations suffered financially during the pandemic. Overhead costs have risen, attendance and corporate funding have fallen, and activists have scrutinized longtime donors, including parts of the Sackler family linked to opioids. For many museums, receiving logistical and, at times, financial support from a major gallery is no longer seen as unpalatable.
'The museums are subsidized by the galleries and the collectors who support those galleries, and it's hard to elbow your way into the lineup if you aren't already included in that circle,' said Robert Storr, a former curator at the Museum of Modern Art.
Asking art dealers for money 'used to be taboo,' according to Michael Darling, a curator who founded Museum Exchange, a platform matching prospective art donors with museums. But the old norms have continued to shift. 'These museums are just so desperate to find funding sources, and the galleries are one of the first things they think of,' he said.
How Hauser & Wirth Conquered New York
Since touching down in the United States in 2009, Hauser & Wirth has evolved into a global juggernaut with 19 locations, including three in Manhattan. Its influence has grown by helping fund exhibitions, recruiting museum curators into key positions and luring top artists from rival galleries.
This season, the gallery provided logistical and financial support to the Met, Guggenheim and Whitney shows of its artists, securing loans of artworks from collectors. That translated to credit for its participation on museum websites, alongside foundations and board members.
It did not underwrite MoMA's current show by Whitten — that museum, unlike others, said it does not accept funding from art galleries — but it raised his visibility by transporting 40 of his sculptures from the Greek island of Crete, where he had a summer home and studio, to the U.S. nearly a decade ago, so that curators could see them.
It was part of the gallery's long-term strategy to promote its artists, which helped lead to Whitten's 2018 retrospective at the Baltimore Museum of Art and ultimately to the new MoMA show, according to Marc Payot, president of Hauser & Wirth, who runs the gallery alongside its co-founders, Iwan and Manuela Wirth. (The Wirths, who are married, also operate Artfarm, a hospitality group with a luxury hotel and restaurants around the world; Manuela is a daughter of the art collector Ursula Hauser and heir to a Swiss retail fortune.)
'Having an institutional presence is the most important aspect for the longevity of an artist's career,' Payot said. He added that financial support was secondary to the logistical help that Hauser & With provides museums, which includes helping curators secure funding and loans from wealthy collectors, organizing parties and funding the production of luxe exhibition catalogs.
Museums have different policies that determine what kind of assistance galleries can provide. While MoMA said it does not accept any funding from galleries, institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum and the Guggenheim do.
Ann Bailis, a spokeswoman for the Met, acknowledged that the museum accepts some financial support from galleries though she declined to provide details. She said that 'the museum arranges for loans from institutions and collectors, and occasionally an artist's gallery can be helpful in this process.' (The Met's website for 'Lorna Simpson: Source Notes' cited the 'support' of Hauser & Wirth, among its sponsors.)
Ashley Reese, the Whitney's communications director, said that exhibition choices are made independent of possible funding sources. (In addition to providing support to 'Amy Sherald: American Sublime,' Hauser & Wirth is also a co-chair of the Whitney's upcoming gala, its most important fund-raiser of the year.)
Payot said it was a coincidence that so many artists on the gallery's roster were having museum exhibitions this spring in New York.
'It is way less about our influence but really a testament to the artists,' he said, noting that the artists had their own relationships with each of the institutions. 'It's easy to be cynical, but it's sincere.'
Other museum leaders agreed. 'It wouldn't be fair to accuse the museum-gallery relationship of pure transactionalism,' said Madeleine Grynsztejn, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, where Rashid Johnson's show will travel as part of its national tour. She added, 'what we have in common is supporting the outcome that benefits the artist.'
But some art historians said the relationship between museums and galleries has shifted in recent decades.
Veronique Chagnon-Burke, a chairwoman of the International Art Market Studies Association, said that most modern art museums were founded in the early 20th century and built on relationships between institutions and commercial galleries. Solo exhibitions weren't so important, however, as dealers were more focused on ensuring their artists made it into the permanent collections then taking shape. She said that recently, as corporate funding for exhibitions decreased, wealthy galleries have helped close the budget gaps.
The Rise of the Mega-Gallery
Mega-galleries represent a tiny but elite share of the art world: Thousands of working artists do not have any gallery representation, and there are more than 760 galleries in New York City alone, according to a 2020 analysis.
But artists associated with these behemoth art corporations are more likely to get a prominent platform at New York museums. The Times found that more than half of all solo exhibitions of contemporary artists since 2019 at the Morgan Library & Museum, and 40 percent of similar shows at the Guggenheim Museum, featured artists represented by the largest galleries. At the Met the figure was almost one-third, at MoMA almost one-quarter, and at the Whitney about one-fifth.
Smaller institutions, as well as those outside Manhattan, tended to focus on artists with less commercial clout; for example, less than 10 percent of the Brooklyn Museum's contemporary solo exhibitions featured a mega-gallery artist. More than 30 percent of its solo exhibitions were devoted to artists with no gallery ties at the time.
Some experts have questioned whether museums are doing enough to introduce audiences to a diverse pool of artists beyond the art stars.
As institutions cut back on travel budgets, their curators have fewer opportunities to encounter artists outside of the commercial art world, who can also be a harder sell to museum executives.
'I look at it as miniature acts of heroism by curators who are prepared to say, 'I know this isn't in line with current fashion or this artist isn't going to turn the turnstile widely, but I believe their work merits a fair hearing by our audience,'' said Maxwell Anderson, a former director of the Whitney Museum and the Dallas Museum of Art, and president of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, which promotes the work of Black artists from the American South.
Against the odds, these shows are still happening: Contemporary artists without gallery representation made up 20 percent of all solo exhibitions at top New York museums since 2019, the Times found.
But over the last 15 years of the art market's expansion, American museums have become more comfortable working hand-in-hand with galleries, said Ylinka Barotto, a former museum curator who now leads museum relations at Perrotin gallery. 'We don't work in silos anymore,' she said.
John Elderfield, MoMA's former chief curator of painting and sculpture, began working with Gagosian in 2012, a few years after leaving the museum, and Ingrid Schaffner of the Chinati Foundation joined Hauser & Wirth in 2023. David Zwirner has operated its own department for museum partnerships since 2022.
'There is no evident line separating commercial galleries and art museums,' Anderson said. 'Galleries have become extremely adept at creating thoroughly researched experiences that museums can't really afford.'
With deflated ticket sales and a dwindling list of donors, museums are eager to find alternative sources of capital, said Sally Yerkovich, who teaches museum anthropology at Columbia University and leads revisions for the code of ethics at the International Council of Museums. When deciding who to accept money from, the pre-eminent concern is 'that the sponsors for an exhibition share the values of the museum,' she said.
Hauser & Wirth executives said they wanted to cultivate the artistic legacies, and even in a challenging art market, the gallery's influence — as well as that of a select few competitors — shows no signs of waning.
In September, one of the newest artists on the dealer's roster, Jeffrey Gibson, who represented the United States at the last Venice Biennale, will unveil a new commission on the Met Museum's facade. The American painter George Condo is getting a solo exhibition at the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris in October. And in South Korea, there are three major museum shows opening for three artists it represents: Mark Bradford, Lee Bul and a 20th-century master of sculpture, Louise Bourgeois.
Forget Hauser spring. It may be more accurate to say: It's a Hauser year.