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In June, New York Times art critic Roberta Smith took a walk down memory lane on the Independent art fair’s podcast Previously Unknown. She described her early days exploring the 1970s art world, a place so small it would be unrecognizable today.
“I could see everything I wanted to in a day,” she said.
As Smith noted, the art world has since grown exponentially. There are 362 shows in New York currently listed on See Saw, an app that acts as a guide to galleries in several cities. Beyond New York, the mega-galleries have expanded into global corporate behemoths, with boards of directors and locations from London to Tokyo. The global art market has grown to $65 billion. Gone are the days when a mom-and-pop dealer coaxed a few eccentric artists into MoMA and art historical stardom.
As the art world has grown into a bona fide industry, PR agencies, consultants, and advisers have become fixtures of the business. Here comes one more: the artist’s agent. And the agency everyone has been talking about lately is 291 Agency.
For Max Teicher, a former Gagosian staffer who founded 291 a little over three years ago, the arrival of the agency model is a consequence of the art world’s development, which has come with some growing pains.
“People ask if businesses like 291 exist because galleries aren’t doing their jobs,” Teicher told me at a Tribeca coffee shop, not far from the agency’s offices. “No. The last thing I am is an art dealer. It’s that galleries did their job too well. Curators, writers, art handlers—they’ve all done their jobs so well that the art world has graduated to a larger part of the cultural zeitgeist. And when that happens, it’s necessary for agents to exist. Our business is a byproduct of the art world’s success.”
Teicher runs 291 with fellow Gagosian veterans Andrea Crane and Valentina Castellani (both of whom also have auction house credentials), Russia Murphy, Jessy Arisen, and a team of consultants, project managers, former gallery directors, and content producers. The agency’s name is a nod to the famous gallery run by photographer Alfred Stieglitz in the early 20th century. The goal of 291, Teicher said, is to act as a holistic extension of the studio model with an overall mission to grow an artist’s practice and influence. Of course, influence can come in many forms: critical, institutional, financial, public, generational.
“It’s more than asking an artist what they want,” Teicher said. “What we really focus on is asking ‘What do you want to be?’ and then planning how to get there. It’s both short- and long-term growth.”
The agency takes inspiration from not only the Hollywood heavyweights like Creative Artists Agency, which was founded by five power agents who fled William Morris, including Top 200 collector Michael Ovitz, but also talent and literary agents International Creative Management Partners. “The art world until recently existed like the studio model 100 years ago in Hollywood or the publishing industry when the house represented the talent,” Teicher said.
His agency is discreet. The chic, monochromatic website for 291 has no client list and no pricing—not unlike CAA’s website—and when asked to divulge any of that on the record, Teicher demurred.
“We are meant to be in the background,” he said. “I don’t talk about specific projects we work on with artists because I would never suggest for a second that a specific project or situation happened only because of their agent, and I don’t want to advertise one artist’s project as a way to encourage other artists to work with us. Comparisons like that are just inappropriate.”
Three art world professionals with knowledge of 291’s operations, speaking on condition of anonymity, told ARTnews that the agency takes a 10 percent commission on everything an artist earns—from a university talk to a museum acquisition—and that it works with around 15 artists, including Laurie Simmons, Hank Willis Thomas, and Eddie Martinez.
One artist who has worked with 291 and asked to remain anonymous told ARTnews that their relationship with the agency was project-specific. “It’s really about complementing the efforts of my primary gallery,” the artist said. “I’ve always believed it’s more productive, and often more effective, to have multiple contacts and good relationships. It opens up possibilities. That said, everything I do has to support my core objective: working in the studio.”
Bolstering an artist’s studio practice is a common goal among the new set of art world agents. Earlier this year, Valeria Szabó Facchin launched her own London-based agency, Studio Expanded, which will open an exhibition by the Frieze Artist Award winner Himali Singh Soin at Greatorex in London on Thursday. Unlike Teicher, Facchin told ARTnews that she doesn’t shy away from being labeled an art dealer.
“I don’t think of my business as a traditional agent, but rather as an incubator in the [Leo] Castelli model,” Facchin said. “I’m more than an agent or a manager. It’s about taking the time to understand an artist and create a strategy around them, protecting them, and building a partnership where they can succeed, where their gallery can succeed, and of course the collectors and institutions [can succeed].”
Before Studio Expanded, Facchin worked as the founding director for the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation, which she said afforded her the opportunity to buy primary market works directly from an artist’s studio. Over time, Facchin said, artists began asking her to represent them, help them navigate the labyrinthine structure of museums, or even open a gallery.
“What I’d noticed is that artists who have become institutionally strong are getting concerned about how much the market dictated the art world. They worry about getting too close to the commercial arena, about over- or under-producing, and about losing the support of more art history–minded curators and collectors,” she explained.
Facchin said that she works with artists on a retainer and then takes a commission on top for specific projects, with the understanding that the exact arrangement can change depending on where an artist is at in their career. She described her role as being more akin to what a dealer was like in the 1970s, where smaller operations allowed gallerists to be more nurturing to individual artists.
“Today, because of the size of the market and the amount of competition, I think many galleries are put in a position where they can’t invest much time in an artist’s long-term career,” she said.
Talk to a few art dealers and you’ll find that they don’t disagree with Facchin’s assessment. After all, galleries these days have to manage a grueling year-round art fair calendar on top of rising rents, an often erratic secondary market, and a slate of around ten shows a year. The pressures and incentives dealers face today means that their staffs are heavily weighted toward salespeople and short-term quotas.
“Certain things have become luxury activities for galleries today,” Elizabeth Dee, the founder of the Independent art fair and a former dealer, told ARTnews. “Sadly, one of those things is working toward museum exhibitions and institutional sales. Those projects are long lead—they take a great deal of time, effort, and research. It’s a different way of working than the market allows right now, especially given the structures of scale that a lot of galleries have moved into.”
Some have resisted the art world’s present—and, seemingly, its future. A senior sales director at a major New York gallery told ARTnews that they and many of their colleagues got into the business to work closely with artists, not ride around on a collector’s private jet.
“My problem with this whole model is that it assumes that galleries don’t want to have a deep connection to their artists,” the dealer said. “The idea that a gallery would rather deal with an intermediary, it’s absurd. Dealing with the artists is the best part of my job. Being in the trenches with the artists, helping them make decisions, and building their careers, that’s the most exhilarating part of my life. If an artist thinks they need an agent, you know what they actually need? A new gallery.”
Ovitz, who helped found CAA, had a more measured take.
“There is a possibility that this new model could work, but personally, I don’t believe anybody can represent an artist without a space,” Ovitz said. He added that the best dealers—like Barbara Gladstone, who died this past June, and Pace Gallery founder Arne Glimcher—“ate, lived, and breathed the art business.”
Ovitz said that an agent, especially one in Los Angeles, is too removed from the art world dialogue and the institutions to truly help an artist’s career. “I think if anybody has a shot to change the system, it might be some of these new people based in New York.”