David Lewis, Who Shut His Gallery, Joins Hauser＆Wirth

New York dealer, critic, and art historian David Lewis, whoclosedhis well-regarded eponymous gallery earlier this year after more than a decade in business, has joined blue-chip megagallery Hauser & Wirth as senior director,Artnewsreports. Lewis, who launched his operation on the Lower East Side in 2013 before moving shop to TriBeCa in 2021, gained a reputation for championing emerging and underappreciated artists, among them Photoconceptualist Barbara Bloom, self-taught assemblage artist Thornton Dial, abstract painter Lucy Dodd, feminist printmaker Mary Beth Edelson, performance artist Dawn Kasper, realist painter Claire Lehmann, and abstract sculptor and painter Kyle Thurman.

“It is an incredible honor to be joining Hauser & Wirth,” Lewis toldArtnews.“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.”

“[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,” said Hauser & Wirth president Marc Payot in a statement.

Whether Lewis will bring any artists from his own stable with him remains to be seen. He is the third cutting-edge New York gallerist in the past year to close up shop and take a job with a larger concern, after Simone Subal, who closed her eponymous gallery and assumed the role of senior director at New York’s Paula Cooper Gallery; and Jasmin Tsou, who shuttered JTT and took on the position of director at Lisson Gallery, which has outposts in multiple cities.