The Danish painter (1864–1916) remains relatively obscure, though his inclusion in a number of international exhibitions at venues from the Royal Academy of Arts in London to the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art, has garnered him a growing, almost cultish following. And that following will likely only grow, especially in the United States, as the Art Institute of Chicago recently purchased his 1907 painting, Interior. The Music Room, Strandgade 30, for a record $9.1 million at Sotheby’s last year.

“It’s really beautiful to show such a historical, well-known artist, who is still kind of an unexpected surprise,” said dealer Carlo Knoell, who recently closed his eponymous gallery to join Hauser & Wirth as a senior director.

Hammershøi was also an anomaly for his time. Influenced by 17th-century Dutch painting, particularly Johannes Vermeer, Hammershøi veered into his own way of making, which feels fresh even today. Described as a painter of “silence” and melancholy, Hammershøi renders stark gray interiors. Pared-down versions of what he observed in the rooms of his Copenhagen apartment, they lean toward the surreal.

Titled “Vilhelm Hammershøi. Silence.” and featuring 16 works, the exhibition shows off Hammershøi’s signature stark restraint and  somber gray palette. On view are a few actual masterpieces that are a rare treat to see in person. Hammershøi’s paintings feel very much alive.

The air hangs thick in these foggy, blurred scenes, so much so that this stillness feels not dismal but hopeful. In their cold stillness, these paintings are heaving. Some works show nearly empty rooms, like Interior in London, Brunswick Square (1912), in which the London fog seeps in to the three paned windows, while others show a woman, usually Hammershøi’s wife from behind, the nape of her neck the only skin exposed. She often stands still, to the side of a table, as she does in Interior with a Writing Desk (1900), showing rays of light diffusing the tension of the scene as the woman appears to read a letter. The gallery space’s history as a 19th-century silk ribbon factory adds to the ease of the display here, a comfortable home in which to take it all in.

Rouy will continue to be represented by London’s Hannah Barry Gallery, the space that offered him his second-ever solo show in 2018.

Many of Rouy’s paintings depict blurred figures and abstracted bodies. They channel altered psychological states, and though Rouy has mentioned that his figures are loosely based on actual people, he’s also said his paintings aren’t necessarily meant to represent reality.

His paintings have been shown widely in recent years, with solo shows at blue-chip galleries like Nicola Vassell and Peres Projects. He’s also figured in group shows held by the X Museum, the K11 Art Foundation, the Albertina, and more.

Hauser & Wirth will host Rouy’s first exhibition in October in London. After that, in November, Rouy will debut a collaboration with choreographer Sharon Eyal that premieres in the British capital before heading to Paris, Vienna, and Milan.

In a statement, Neil Wenman, global creative director and partner at Hauser & Wirth, said, “George Rouy’s unique paintings, and performance works, speak of a challenging modernity, of an overwhelming anxiety and the guilty pleasures of life. They are disturbing and yet familiar, approachable yet repulsive, as if held captive in a liminal space between psyche and being, memory and edifice. His paintings create a world whereby we are caught in a loop; we see, we arouse, we deny, we suffocate, we undo.”

The five pieces set to go on view are Repetition Nineteen I (1967), a series of 18 bucket-like forms, on loan from the Museum of Modern Art in New York; Area (1968), a group of rubberized forms Hesse made for critic Lucy R. Lippard’s landmark traveling exhibition “Soft and Apparently Soft Sculpture,” that is on loan from the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University in Columbus; Aught (1968), a four-part piece on loan from from the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archives in California; Augment (1968), a related four-part piece on loan from Glenstone Museum in Maryland; and the monumental 13-panel Expanded Expansion (1969), which stands 10 feet tall and 30 feet across, on loan from the Guggenheim Museum in New York. None of the pieces is for sale.

The show, which is organized by Hesse estate adviser Barry Rosen, with art historian Briony Fer, opens May 2 at the gallery’s 22nd Street location in New York, comes complete with a publication (Eva Hesse: Exhibitions, 1972–2022) and a Hesse symposium, and features speakers including art historian Élisabeth Lebovici, and Hesse’s sister Helen Hesse Charash, with whom Hesse fled Nazi Germany when they were children.

THE HEADLINES

UNDER CONSIDERATION. Citing a reported spike in antisemitism, legislators introduced a bill in Congress on March 20 aimed at establishing a Smithsonian Museum of American Jewish history. The legislation would set up a commission to examine whether the existing Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, which faced bankruptcy four years ago, could become part of the Smithsonian Institution, providing it with greater financial security. If the Weitzman Museum becomes a full part of the government trust, it would be given a “figurative place” on the museum-lined National Mall in Washington, D.C., reports the JTA. Yet the proposal has already drawn scrutiny, and Hyperallergic notes the bill is sponsored by “vocally pro-Israel Democratic legislators.”

ARREST IN SIKKEMA MURDER. The ex-husband of Brent Sikkema, an esteemed art dealer who was murdered in Brazil in January, was arrested in New York on Wednesday, reports ARTnews’ Senior Editor Alex Greenberger. Daniel Sikkema has been the subject of much speculation in Brazil, where authorities have claimed that he may be connected to his former spouse’s killing, and investigators have been vocal about wanting to arrest him. Alejandro Triana Prevez, a 30-year-old Cuban man, confessed to Sikkema’s murder, but his lawyer said he was groomed and eventually manipulated to do so by Daniel Sikkema.

THE DIGEST

Another Damien Hirst formaldehyde sculpture of a preserved shark, dated to the 1990’s and sold for $8 million, was in fact made in 2017. That makes a total of four known backdated sculptures by Hirst’s workshop, according to The Guardian. The piece titled “The Unknown (Explored, Explained, Exploded),” dated to 1999, features a 13-foot-long tiger shark dissected into three parts, and is the centerpiece of a luxury bar in a Las Vegas resort. [The Guardian]

Hauser & Wirth will inaugurate their 18th exhibition space in Basel on June 1, with a first show featuring 18 paintings by Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershøi, made between 1883 and 1914. Titled “Silence” and curated by Felix Krämer, the Vermeer-influenced artist is known for his interiors that capture a poetic stillness. [ARTnews]

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego is selling its downtown exhibition space two years after opening a $110-million expansion project. The closure of the space raises questions about several artworks commissioned for the site, as well as its binational mandate aimed at audiences in the San Diego-Tijuana border area. [The Los Angeles Times]

A London judge has ruled that a disputed painting by Anthony Van Dyck, belongs to the bankrupt British socialite, James Stunt. Stunt had tried to claim ownership belonged to his father, Geoffrey Stunt, which would have prevented the piece from being included in the son’s bankruptcy estate. [The Guardian]

French culture minister Rachida Dati wants to reform France’s recently initiated “Culture Pass” program, an app that gives youth credits to spend on cultural activities. Dati argues the pass fails at its intented mission of diversifying audiences and attracting socio-economic groups to certain performances and exhibitions considered high-art. [Le Monde]

The École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris is under fire after reports that it pulped early editions of a book about women artists at the school, because of a controversial chapter addressing the #MeToo movement, and the school’s handling of past sexual harassment claims. [ARTnews]

Large outdoor artworks are going on view around Hong Kong in time for the Art Basel fair this month. They include giant neon ovoids scattered into the sea, by teamLAB, at Victoria Harbor. [The New York Times]

THE KICKER

STING OF SATIRE. Europe’s outdoor festivals with their parades of giant, moving sculptures offer a fascinating look at how small communities have historically used art and satire to speak up against powerful authorities. Euronews writer Roberto Ferrer takes readers on a tour of such festivals, categorized as UNESCO Intangible Heritage of Humanity, beginning with this week’s Fallas festival, and the Nit de la Cremà celebration in the València region of Spain. There is also the medieval Battle of the Oranges in Ivrea, Italy, which is part of the town’s carnival, in which participants do what one might expect: throw oranges at each other. The story behind it is about a local revolt against an unjust ruler, sparked by a heroine named Violetta, who refused to sleep with him. The list, and the stories, goes on…

Hammershøi, who was born in 1864 and was based in Copenhagen for the majority of his career, is best-known for his interiors and portraits, which draw from influences like Old Masters, in particular Vermeer. His interior scenes often convey a sense of eerie stillness, as though the artist had labored to capture the scene when the light in the room was just right; he often painted the same room several times over. Hammershøi treated his portraits of people in a similar way, even when it came to his self-portraits. The people in these pictures always appear to be caught off guard, interrupted mid-thought.

Titled “Silence” and curated by art historian Felix Krämer, the Hauser & Wirth exhibition will bring together 18 paintings by the artist from private collections. Several of those works have rarely ever been exhibited to the public. Presented as a “cabinet-like exhibition,” according to the gallery, the show will include works made between 1883 to 1914.

“It has been a long-held dream to present this truly exceptional artist [Hammershøi] whose lineage situates him as a kindred spirit to Johannes Vermeer, Giorgio Morandi, Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth,” Hauser & Wirth senior director Carlo Knöll said in a statement. “Hammershøi’s work reveals a remarkably modernist sensibility that continues to garner new generations of followers who join those steeped in the history of art of the 19th and early 20th Centuries.”

Hauser & Wirth, which started out in nearby Zurich in 1992, announced last September that it would set up shop in Basel, marking its fifth gallery space in Switzerland but its first in the city where the world’s top art fair takes place each June. With this expansion the gallery would take over the current space of Galerie Knöll, whose founder, Carlo Knöll, joined the gallery as senior director.

With a focus on secondary market sales, Knöll has a history of showing artists whose work has receded into the annals of art history and shining a light on them anew. Among the solo shows he mounted for historical artists include Christian Friedrich Gille (in 2018), Antonio Calderara (2020), Rudolf Maeglin (2021) and Verena Loewensberg (2019), whose work is currently the subject of a solo at Hauser & Wirth’s Upper East Side space. (He also showed a number of Neo-Expressionists, like Per Kirkeby, Markus Lüpertz, and A. R. Penck.)

Hauser & Wirth’s Basel space will build on this exhibition history, with the Hammershøi show being the first of several historical outings to be mounted there. “Opening this space in the cultural heart of Basel will allow for intimate encounters with art of an extraordinary calibre,” Hauser & Wirth cofounder and president Iwan Wirth said in a statement. “Since we opened our very first space in Zurich in 1992, we have always sought to create a dialogue between artists of different eras. Hammershøi possessed a powerfully prescient vision and his art remains as vital and relevant today as when it was created.”

As part of his new representation, the Johannesburg-based artist will continue to show with Goodman Gallery in South Africa and the UK, and with Galleria Lia Rumma in Naples, Italy, but he will no longer show with Marian Goodman Gallery, his dealer for over two decades.

Kentridge is known for a prolific and wide-ranging practice anchored in prints, drawings, and animated films that often reference the history of South Africa. The move to Hauser & Wirth is not wholly unexpected; in December 2022, Kentridge mounted an exhibition with the gallery for which two large-scale sculptures were installed in the gardens of the Gstaad Palace, in Gstaad, Switzerland.

“Marian Goodman has been steadfast in supporting my work for the 25 years I have been with her gallery,” Kentridge told ARTnews in an email. “She and her team have been vital to my practice and have forged connections between me and a range of institutions, curators and collectors. I cannot thank the gallery enough for their support. After much careful consideration I am excited to begin the next chapter, working with my existing galleries Goodman Gallery and Galleria Lia Rumma in collaboration with Hauser & Wirth. I very much look forward to working with [Hauser & Wirth co-presidents Iwan [Wirth], Manuela [Wirth], Marc [Payot] and the team.”

Kentridge’s practice extends far beyond object-making. Over the past decade, he has expanded his studio in Johannesburg into a space for workshops and mentorships, becoming one of the largest local cultural employers.

While he has created theatrical performances beginning in the 1990s and has worked on operas since the early 2000s, he has recently ramped up his work on large projects. Recent theatrical productions that have appeared in theaters and festivals around the world include Waiting for the Sibyl (2019), The Head & the Load (2018), and Ursonate (2017). In 2022, his film, Oh To Believe in Another World, made to accompany a performance of Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony, premiered at the KKL Luzern Concert hHall and has since been performed in multiple venues worldwide.  

Emily Jane Kirwan, a partner at Marian Goodman gallery, attributes Kentridge’s change of representation to this shift. “I would say it is a transitional time for William,” she told ARTnews in a phone interview. “We have supported all his critical initiatives, including recent exhibitions at the Broad, the Royal Academy, and a major exhibition upcoming at an East Coast institution. His practice has become focused on extremely large theatrical performances, stage productions, and, more recently, films that have appeared in film festivals and have different distributions.”

Marian Goodman Gallery is itself currently in a transitional period. In 2021, Goodman, who is in her mid-90s and was at that time stepping away from day-to-day operations, revealed a succession plan for her gallery that involved appointing four partners. Kentridge told ARTnews last fall that over the period he was represented by the gallery, “my conversations were almost entirely with Marian.”

During his years with Marian Goodman, Kentridge has formed a reputation as a museum artist rather than a market artist. His current auction record stands at $1.5 million for a bronze piece sold at Sotheby’s in 2013, modest for such an accomplished talent of his generation, but since the ’90s he has had solo exhibitions at just about every important art museum in the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Louvre.

Established in the early 1990s in Switzerland by Iwan and Manuela Wirth and Ursula Hauser, Hauser & Wirth has expanded substantially over the past 15 years and currently operates spaces in New York, London, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Somerset, and the island of Menorca. The gallery has added numerous artists to its program over the past decade, including superstars like Cindy Sherman, Pat Steir, and Firelei Báez; its roster now numbers 103 artists and estates.

In a statement, Iwan Wirth, who also serves as the gallery’s co-president, said, “It is a true honor that William Kentridge has decided to join our gallery. William’s virtuosity as an artist, thinker, polymath and mentor of others sets him apart as a creative luminary of our time. Through the diversity, courage and sheer power of his work, he interweaves themes that are both universal and personal to lead us through the mazes of politics, mythology, literature and art history. In this way, William has created something simultaneously epic and ephemeral with his art, always finding new approaches to expressing the most challenging ideas.”

Wirth’s statement continued, “We are also profoundly inspired by the spirit of collaboration so deeply embedded within his process: in founding the Centre for the Less Good Idea in Johannesburg, he has created a wonderful home for collective experimentation and cross-disciplinary practice and set an example for communality. We look forward to working in close collaboration with Goodman Gallery—a ‘home’ gallery to William for 30 years— and Galleria Lia Rumma and to furthering the mission to expand global awareness of, engagement in and appreciation for Kentridge’s art and values.”

This week, Hauser & Wirth opened a new street-level gallery space in Hong Kong’s central business district with an inaugural exhibition featuring stunning new works by Chinese artist Zhang Enli.

The blue-chip gallery, which first opened in the city in 2018, moved down the road, from their original premises on the 15th and 16th floors in the famed art gallery cluster at H Queen’s to a three-floor, 10,000-square-foot space designed by Selldorf Architects on 8 Queen’s Road Central, at the main road’s junction with the historic Ice House Street, and Duddell Street.

The gallery’s new space is definitely a sight to behold even for pedestrians going by, with Enli’s incandescently colorful gestural paintings displayed throughout the ground floor. The works were specifically chosen for the show to reflect the artist’s progression to looser and more liberated brushwork that has been a hallmark of his practice as of late.

“We deliberately sought out a space that maximizes the exposure to the public through ground-floor access, so the gallery is welcoming for the highly engaged audience for art in the city,” Hauser & Wirth president Iwan Wirth told ARTnews during the gallery’s opening week. “The location in Hong Kong was very carefully selected and is ideal because it allows us to remain closely connected to the community of galleries and institutions in Central.”

Nearby street-level galleries in the vicinity include WOAW Gallery, Opera Gallery, and Lévy Gorvy Dayan, as well as David Zwirner and Tang Contemporary Art, both of which are still located in the H Queen’s building.

The trend to street-level galleries is recent, as such prime real estate has historically been rare for art commercial galleries in Hong Kong. “To have street level art gallery space—especially on the scale of Hauser & Wirth’s new premises—is something most other international art hubs take for granted, but it’s a big deal in Hong Kong,” said Rosanna Herries, a Hong Kong–based cultural communications consultant who attended the gallery’s crowded opening on Wednesday. “For art appreciating audiences in the city, it is exciting to have a gallery with such sophisticated exhibition programming committing so firmly to accessibility to, and visibility for, their artists.”

Yet the question remains why Hong Kong now? In addition to expanding their respective Asia teams, Christie’s is moving its Asia-Pacific headquarters into a 50,000-square-foot, four-story space in the Henderson building in the central district later this year; Phillips moved into new, expanded premises next to the new M+ museum in the West Kowloon Cultural District in March 2023, coinciding with the first travel restrictions-free Art Basel Hong Kong; and Sotheby’s will also soon be moving into the brand-new Six Pacific Place in Admiralty, a short distance away from the auction house’s newly announced year-round exhibition space.

All this activity is especially curious given the launch of new fairs in Seoul and Tokyo and the movement of wealth during the pandemic which seemed to temporarily bolster Singapore’s status as a rising art capital over Hong Kong. Interestingly, Hauser & Wirth has so far not participated in Singapore’s relatively nascent international art fair ART SG, the second edition of which took place the week before the opening of Hauser & Wirth’s latest gallery space.

For Elaine Kwok, the gallery’s managing partner for Asia, Hong Kong’s history as a thriving art scene is the clear draw: “Hong Kong’s flourishing art scene has long attracted artists, collectors, curators, and enthusiasts from around the world. It is an established and vibrant art and cultural hub, so this relocation reaffirms our commitment not only in Hong Kong but also to the wider region.”

She added, “We are very positive about Asia. Hauser & Wirth was active in the region for decades before opening our first space in Hong Kong in 2018, and we look forward to many more years of engagement and growth ahead.”

Lawrence Van Hagen, who founded his art advisory business LVH Art in 2016 and works with clients in Paris, London, and Hong Kong, noted the highly energetic commercial art gallery scene in the city, especially since it reopened to international visitors last March.

“The Hong Kong art gallery scene is very much oriented toward helping build the collections of buyers within Hong Kong and the surrounding regions,” Van Hagen told ARTnews. “Notably, in Hong Kong there are no import charges on art, and it is easy to ship works to and from the city, making it a very competitive atmosphere for collectors to buy and for galleries to exhibit.”

Kwok said the gallery’s “clients who are active here not only come from Hong Kong and across Asia, but also from further afield, especially during the annual Art Basel Hong Kong moment.”

Though Enli was the first Asian artist to join Hauser & Wirth’s roster, back in 2006, the gallery has never mounted an exhibition for him in Asia, but he has been widely exhibited at its spaces in New York, London, Zurich, and Somerset, England. He’s also had several high-profile museum exhibitions in mainland China, including the now defunct Long Museum, the He Art Museum, and Power Station of Art Shanghai.

“We’ve simply been waiting for the perfect moment to exhibit his work with a fantastic show in Hong Kong,” Wirth said. “The inauguration of a new space here—a significant milestone for us in Asia—seemed the ideal opportunity.”

“I developed an interest in Ambera’s work and, in discussions with her, and then with Sophie [Morner, the owner of Company Gallery], I thought [collaboration] would serve the artist better, as well as support a gallery that is doing a great job in New York,” Hauser & Wirth co-president Marc Payot told ARTnews.

Morner, who opened Company in 2015, said of Wellmann, that “a joint partnership will be the strongest way to support her career right now.”

Wellmann, who is in her early forties and whose paintings depict abstracted bodies intertwined in erotic scenarios, joined Company in 2020 and had her first solo show there the following year. Since then, she has had solo exhibitions at Pond Society, the Shanghai space run by collector Yang Bin, the Metropolitan Art Centre in Belfast, Ireland, and, last April, at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, a private museum founded by collector Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in 1995.

Morner said she was attracted to the idea of a closely collaborative representation because she’s been interested in new gallery models and how younger galleries like her own can continue to work with artists as they grow.

“If anyone is going to change these gallery models, it’s the galleries like Hauser & Wirth,” Morner said. “If the bigger galleries start thinking outside the box about what is best for the artists. Because it’s not always best for the artists to leave a young gallery for a big one.”

Company has proved to be one of the more ambitious spaces to open in New York over the past decade. In 2021 Morner moved Company from its original modest space in downtown Manhattan, to a 4,000-square-foot, stand-alone space on Elizabeth Street nearby in Chinatown. She said she sees her gallery as “constantly growing and expanding.” At the same time, at least one artist has departed. The new space opened with an exhibition of work by Barbara Hammer, curated by gallery artist Tiona Nekkia McClodden. Shortly afterward, McClodden left Company for a larger gallery, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, and then an even larger one, White Cube.

Payot characterizes the collective impact initiative as an “entrepreneurial model” that he hopes will “support an ecosystem,” before adding that he would be happy if it is copied by other large galleries.

“I don’t see myself as having created something that unique. It hopefully will change some structures within our system,” he said.

Payot added that working with Nicola Vassell on Uman, the first shared artist in the initiative, at last week’s Art Basel Miami Beach fair “went incredibly well, and that in itself is a message true to the art world that things can maybe done a little bit differently.”

A little over a year ago, just as the art world was emerging from the pandemic, Marc Payot, co-president of mega-gallery Hauser & Wirth, and dealer Nicola Vassell started having conversations about the challenges of the current gallery ecosystem. Vassell had opened her eponymous New York gallery in 2021, after stints working for Deitch and Pace galleries, and as an independent consultant. As Vassell recalls it, the conversations led to the question of the challenges faced by galleries of different scales. Was there a way. they wondered, that galleries could work together to support a thriving ecosystem, rather than one where artists left galleries like Vassell’s for those like Hauser?

“We all had a lot of time to think during the pandemic,” Payot told ARTnews recently, “and I came to the realization that the art world is in a state where the few very large successful galleries are becoming more and more successful and larger, and for the rest of the ecosystem, things are very tough.”

In the meantime, Payot became interested in an artist Vassell represents, the painter Uman. The two dealers decided to give a new arrangement a shot: a full partnership that will be the first in a new initiative for Hauser & Wirth modeled on a framework of collective impact.

Collective impact is a model that became popular in philanthropic circles around 2011. It refers to an intense partnership between organizations (often ones of different scales) to accomplish a shared goal. The criteria for such a relationship are a common agenda, a shared measurement system, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and a backbone organization. In the case of Hauser and Vassell, they’ll be leaning on transparency and “intensive resource sharing” to develop the partnership.

“It’s an entrepreneurial way of thinking differently in order to develop the career of an artist, on one hand, and, on the other hand, to support a smaller gallery in its development,” Payot said of Hauser and Vassell usage of collective impact.

Vassell started working with the Somali-born, upstate New York-based Uman shortly after opening her gallery, and the works have caught on with collectors. Uman started out selling art on the street in New York in the early 2000s, before a 2015 show at the alternative space White Columns. Downtown New York dealer David Fierman, founder of Fierman gallery, worked with the artist for three years, at Fierman and previously at Louis B. James gallery, and sold her work to both collectors and institutions. Vassell, who began representing Uman in 2022, sold out a booth of the artist’s paintings at the Independent Fair that year, and had a successful solo show with Uman this past spring.

“She is a remarkable artist,” Vassell told ARTnews. “A once-in-a-generation talent. And her work has this capacity for evolution. She needs an outlet to express that that reaches far and wide. But that gives fuel to the capacity to evolve.”

Fiercely protecting such artists from the incursion of larger suitors, Vassell said, is not a good way to further their careers. “When you have a talent like Uman in your stable the reflex might be to build a wall,” she said, “but I’ve been in the business long enough to understand that you can’t challenge a talent that may not stay in place. So you widen the circumference, recognizing the global forces of the market.”

The idea, Vassell said, is to have the best of both worlds: the important context of the smaller gallery, and the support system of the mega. Move to a mega too soon, and a young artist can get lost; stay too long with a smaller gallery and an artist can start to feel suffocated. “It’s the ability to have the sum total of two different, but potent support systems, to create an amplified advantage.”

Artists having more than one dealer representative is, of course, nothing new. When an artist is represented by more than one gallery, things often split along geographical lines: one gallery in Europe, for instance, and another in the U.S. The artist decides which artworks go to which gallery, and for each sale the artist makes a set percentage—50% is standard—and the gallery that sells the work gets 50 percent. (Alternatively, one gallery, the artist’s main representative, can consign work to the another, and take a ten percent profit on the sale.) Under the collective impact arrangement, Hauser & Wirth and Vassell will work as a single team for Uman, sharing their respective networks of collectors and museums, and jointly deciding which artworks go where. The financial split is 50 percent to the artist and 25 percent each to the galleries.

Historically, Hauser & Wirth has taken on numerous artists for worldwide representation, and Payot said that won’t necessarily change. But he sees the non-competitive partnership framework as a step toward mitigating the paradigm where young, modestly sized galleries with rigorous programs, like Vassell’s, risk losing their more successful artists to a larger shop.

“This is not something we will do with every single artist,” he said of the Uman deal. “This is one option among many.”

Such dynamics are hardly new. Around 2016, there was a spate of gallery closures in New York, and many blamed mega-galleries like Hauser & Wirth, Pace, Zwirner and Gagosian for hoovering up artists from younger galleries’ programs, putting them at financial risk. Shortly before the pandemic, certain measures were put into place to help smaller galleries along, like David Zwirner’s suggestion, at a New York Times arts conference in 2018, that the megas help to subsidize their smaller colleagues’ participation in major fairs like Art Basel. Basel implemented the idea just a few months later.

The pandemic may have hit pause on some of these concerns, with art fairs on hold, financial support packages from the government, and the increased ease of selling art online, but recently there has been another round of closures, such as that of Lower East Side favorite JTT, and those concerns about the mega-galleries are back in the spotlight.

Payot says that over the next few months Hauser & Wirth will reveal more of these collective impact relationships. In the meantime, don’t be surprised if you overhear some booth-to-booth conversations between Payot and Vassell at Art Basel Miami next week: both galleries are bringing works by Uman, priced at around $90,000.

The galleries will unveil their first jointly organized exhibition of Uman’s work in January at Hauser & Wirth London.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated Uman was based in Buffalo, New York. She is based in upstate New York.