Billionaires & Art Dealers Grab Up Space in NY’s Chelsea District

By: Andrew Cavendish

Larry Gagosian is thinking longterm.

Larry Gagosian’s art-gallery empire, already the world’s largest, is taking over more space in New York’s Chelsea district.

Gagosian, a renowned art dealer who owns the Gagosian Gallery chain of art galleries and earned a reputation for staging museum quality exhibitions, has rented nearly 8,000 square feet of space adjacent to his 26,000-square-foot gallery on West 24th Street, according to Crain’s New York Business. The publication cites Kyle Kirkpatrick, a spokesman for landlord Weinberg Properties, as the one confirming the longterm deal.

“For almost 20 years, the space had been divided into two galleries, one run by Mary Boone, who since May has been serving a 30-month federal prison sentence for tax evasion,” Crain’s reported. “The other was most recently occupied by Pace Gallery, which will consolidate its multiple New York venues into a new, eight-story building on West 25th Street.”

“Both halves were free,” Ron Warren, former partner at Mary Boone Gallery, which had to close as part of the sentencing, told Crain’s. “Coincidentally, he was planning to renovate next door. It was a great opportunity.” The art dealer is said to be modernizing his location on Madison Avenue.

Also in the Chelsea area, Hauser & Wirth is reportedly developing a five-story, 36,000-square-foot building on West 22nd Street designed by architect Annabelle Selldorf, Crain’s said.

Larry Gagosian opened his first gallery in Los Angeles in 1980, specializing in modern and contemporary art, according to his company’s web site. In thirty years Gagosian has evolved into a global network with seventeen exhibition spaces in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, Paris, Geneva, Basel, Rome, Athens, and Hong Kong, designed by world-renowned architects including Caruso St John, Richard Gluckman, Richard Meier, Jean Nouvel, Selldorf Architects, and wHY Architecture.

“Gagosian’s vibrant contemporary program features the work of leading international artists including Georg Baselitz, Ellen Gallagher, Andreas Gursky, Anselm Kiefer, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, Ed Ruscha, Richard Serra, Taryn Simon, Rachel Whiteread, and many others,” the site continues. “Additionally, unparalleled historical exhibitions are prepared and presented on the work of legendary artists such as Francis Bacon, Alexander Calder, John Chamberlain, Willem de Kooning, Lucio Fontana, Helen Frankenthaler, Alberto Giacometti, Roy Lichtenstein, Piero Manzoni, Claude Monet, Henry Moore, Jackson Pollock, David Smith, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, and others.”

In December 1989, the Village Voice noted famously of Gagosian, “It’s not so much his taste as his nose for the market and his ability to coerce that have made him both en­vied and feared. He has a knack for getting people who love art and have lots of money to take the paint­ings off their walls and then sell them to other people who love art and have even more money. It’s a neat business: if there’s a buyer with ready money, ready to snap up a painting, it requires little working capi­tal except for gallery overhead. Although Gagosian never says how much he purchases himself and how much he handles on consignment, it’s clear that much is on consignment. In other words, he can make much of his money without spending a dime.”