David Lewis, a taste-making New York dealer who recently shuttered his gallery in the city, has joined Hauser & Wirth, where he will now serve as senior director.
Lewis’s eponymous gallery opened in 2013 and mounted shows for artists such as Trey Abdella, Barbara Bloom, Thornton Dial, Tomás Esson, Mary Beth Edelson, and Greg Parma Smith. Hauser & Wirth’s announcement of Lewis’s hire did not include mention of whether any artists from his roster would gain representation with his new gallery.
Prior to opening his gallery, Lewis obtained a PhD from the City University of New York, where he studied Francis Picabia, the Dada artist whose influence Lewis charted in “Everyone Loves Picabia,” his gallery’s final show.
“It is an incredible honor to be joining Hauser & Wirth,” Lewis said in an email to ARTnews. “Since my days as an art historian, and then when owning and operating a gallery, I have always intensely admired Hauser & Wirth, and especially the dynamism of its art historical vision. I’m thrilled that what started with Marc Payot as a conversation about artists, the art world, and the ever-changing landscape of ideas, has become this opportunity to help further the gallery’s mission.”
Hauser & Wirth president Marc Payot said in a statement that Lewis “shares Hauser & Wirth’s values, our commitment to original art historical scholarship and our love of living artists as generative forces essential to the wellbeing of the wider culture.”
He is the third New York dealer to close a gallery devoted primarily to young artists and take a job at a blue-chip space in the past year.
Simone Subal, who ran a Lower East Side space that closed this past summer after 12 years in business, was made senior director at New York’s Paula Cooper Gallery this summer. Meanwhile, last year, Jasmin Tsou wound up operations at JTT, the gallery that helped make artists like Jamian Juliano-Villani and Elaine Cameron-Weir famous, and then became a director at Lisson Gallery.
Lewis, Subal, and Tsou’s spaces are among the most prominent New York galleries that have closed in the past two years. Others include Helena Anrather, Queer Thoughts, and Denny Gallery, as well as the blue-chip space Cheim & Read.
