Schwarzman Session - YSC x Tsai CITY - Art World Unlocked: A Conversation with Larry Gagosian

Schwarzman Sessions are peer-led gatherings where conversations generate collaborations and move ideas into action. Because seats are limited, registrants will be automatically placed on the waitlist and will be notified via email if they are selected to participate. 

Join Yale Schwarzman Center and Tsai CITY for an engaging discussion with legendary art dealer and gallerist Larry Gagosian, whose eponymous gallery empire has shaped the contemporary art world for decades.

How did Larry become one of the most influential figures in art globally? What does the future look like for galleries? How do emerging creatives break into the art market? And how does one come to understand and navigate the secretive and mysterious art world? Don’t miss this unique opportunity to discuss these and other topics with one of art's most iconic leaders!

Larry Gagosian

Larry Gagosian opened his first gallery for modern and contemporary art in 1980 in Los Angeles. Today, Gagosian employs more than three hundred people, and has eighteen exhibition spaces across the United States, Europe, and Asia designed by acclaimed architects. The gallery’s initiatives include innovative online viewing rooms coinciding with major art fairs, featuring transparent and comprehensive market analysis; a publishing arm that produces scholarly exhibition catalogues, artist monographs, catalogues raisonnés, and the Gagosian Quarterly magazine; as well as distinctive retail shops.

Known for always encouraging his artists’ ambitions, Mr. Gagosian has fostered the careers of many of the most world-renowned artists working today. Working across the contemporary and modern eras, he represents living artists such as Georg Baselitz, John Currin, Rachel Feinstein, Urs Fischer, Ellen Gallagher, Theaster Gates, Katharina Grosse, Mark Grotjahn, Jennifer Guidi, Andreas Gursky, Hao Liang, Michael Heizer, Damien Hirst, Jia Aili, Titus Kaphar, Anselm Kiefer, Rick Lowe, Vera Lutter, Sally Mann, Takashi Murakami, Albert Oehlen, Giuseppe Penone, Richard Prince, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Nancy Rubins, Ed Ruscha, Taryn Simon, Rudolf Stingel, Sarah Sze, Adriana Varejão, Jeff Wall, Mary Weatherford, Rachel Whiteread, and Jonas Wood, as well as masters of design Frank Gehry and Marc Newson. The gallery’s exhibitions present a broad range of work—from Jenny Saville’s painterly depictions of the human form to Richard Serra’s iconic monumental steel sculptures and drawings. 

Gagosian has prepared and presented unparalleled museum-quality exhibitions of works by historical artists such as Arakawa, Diane Arbus, Richard Artschwager, Francis Bacon, Louise Bourgeois, Alexander Calder, Willem de Kooning, Walter De Maria, Lucio Fontana, Helen Frankenthaler, Alberto Giacometti, Howard Hodgkin, Roy Lichtenstein, Man Ray, Piero Manzoni, Agnes Martin, Claude Monet, Henry Moore, Jackson Pollock, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, and Zao Wou-Ki, among others. A series of groundbreaking Picasso surveys curated by scholar John Richardson was attended by hundreds of thousands of visitors in New York and London. In 2019, Mr. Gagosian curated an exhibition featuring Picasso masterpieces as a tribute to Richardson following his death.

A benefactor of museums and arts organizations worldwide, Mr. Gagosian has provided significant support to a variety of institutions and artists’ projects. In 2019 he organized an exhibition of works donated by artists to help raise funds for the restoration of Notre-Dame de Paris after the devastating fire at the cathedral. Following his support of the first two (RED) Auctions, in 2018 Mr. Gagosian partnered with Bono’s (RED) and Sotheby’s to present the third (RED) Auction to benefit the global fight against AIDS. He was instrumental in presenting the magnificent Ceiling by Cy Twombly in the Salle des Bronzes at the Musée du Louvre in Paris, a commissioned permanent installation unveiled to the public in 2010. An industry innovator, Mr. Gagosian was an early investor in Artsy, the online platform for collecting and discovering art.

Mr. Gagosian is frequently recognized for his contributions to the fields of contemporary and modern art. He has received the Peabody Award as a producer of American Masters: Andy Warhol, A Documentary Film (2006); the insignia of Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur from the French government (2010), after which he was appointed to l’ordre national du Mérite (2015); the Academy Medal from the American Academy in Rome (2010); and the Ellis Island Medal of Honor (2018). In 2017, Forbes magazine named him one of the “100 Greatest Living Business Minds.” Mr. Gagosian has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, since 2013; the Getty President’s International Council since 2019; (RED)’s Advisory Board since 2019; and Carnegie Hall’s Board of Trustees since 2020. He graduated from UCLA with a degree in English literature.