Before art dealers, there were artist agents—diplomats, secretaries and merchants who worked in Renaissance Europe to source and value works of art on behalf of buyers. Dealers emerged later, in the late 16th century in Antwerp and then in Amsterdam, and eventually superseded agents.
Today, as the traditional gallery model grapples with major upheavals and artists increasingly take a more interdisciplinary approach, artist agents are making a comeback. At the end of last month, Cristopher Canizares left his position as a partner at Hauser & Wirth to launch an artist management agency, the Artist Legacy Bureau. He follows a gaggle of new businesses that have opened in the past two years, among them Sensity Studio, which was launched in London by the cultural strategist Dina Mostovaya with a view to promoting female artists; Art+Mgmt, which was established in Miami by Julia Bassiri; and former model Anne Verhallen’s KUNST Agency, which works with creatives in the fashion, art and music worlds. This spring also saw the arrival of Spencer Young, an agency-cum-advisory based in New York.
Jon Horrocks, a former director at Stephen Friedman Gallery, which closed earlier this year, is launching an artist agency focused on museum partnerships. “It’s such a zeitgeist moment,” he says of the sudden spurt in agencies, which he also identifies as a symptom of having to stay “adaptable” in a “turbulent market”.
Cultural strategist Dina Mostovaya founded Sensity Studio in London to promote female artists Courtesy of Sensity Studio
Unlike galleries, many agents operate without a physical space and so overheads are kept to a minimum. Horrocks describes his business as “a small scale, bespoke affair”, which will grow to include a roster of four or five artists on retainer. He is currently working with Sarah Ball, who was previously with Stephen Friedman, and Nick Goss, who is represented by galleries including Josh Lilley in London and Ingleby in Edinburgh. “It’s very much a team effort with the galleries,” Horrocks stresses. “I’m focusing purely on bolstering artists’ institutional presence by engaging with curators and securing museum exhibitions and acquisitions.”
Sliding-scale fees
His fee structure does not follow “a traditional format”, with artists paying for services on a sliding scale. “Some I charge a monthly retainer and others it’s commission based, depending on the museum sales I make,” Horrocks says. “Some artists don’t have any representation, and some do. Some just need a sounding board, whereas others need a full package.”
By taking on the “slower, bespoke work of long-term career development”, which involves estate planning, engaging with academics and publishing archives, Horrocks hopes to “relieve some of the pressure on galleries”. He also aims to give greater agency to artists, “who can then look more holistically at their career, not just through the eyes of their galleries”.
As Horrocks points out, agencies are not there to replace the crucial work of galleries. And, according to the latest Art Basel and UBS Survey of Global Collecting, dealers still dominate as the preferred channel for sales, accounting for 43% of collectors’ spending in 2025. Nonetheless, one of the biggest trends in recent years is the sharp rise of so-called “disintermediated sales”, where artists sell directly to collectors from the studio, via Instagram or through direct commissions. Such sales doubled from 10% in 2021 to 20% in 2025.
Rachel Keller and Sarah Davis have blended their gallery experience with studio management expertise, opening Davis Keller gallery in Los Angeles earlier this year. Davis, who previously ran her own studio management firm, says the idea was spawned by the needs of mid-tier artists who either work with big galleries that cannot supply the administration and studio support they need, or smaller galleries with not enough staff or time to accommodate them. “Easing the tension” between galleries working hard to pay the rent and artists who want to keep growing their practices while making sales is the aim, Keller says. Their target audience, meanwhile, is younger collectors “who might not have access to a different style of gallery”, Davis says.
It feels like all of us in the art world are starting to need different things
Rachel Keller, David Keller gallery
The co-founders both think that artists are more empowered than they have ever been. Keller also points out that certain artists are choosing to work in a more interdisciplinary capacity, with a new genre of arts practitioner emerging. “Artists might not just be interested in having a solo or group show at a gallery but doing activations or collaborations with hospitality companies or brands,” she says. “Maybe that’s where a third person emerges, which is the agent, manager or creative director. It feels like all of us in the art world are starting to need different things from our employers and collaborators. Artists are really looking for the ‘in-betweens’ in the system.”
Precedents in the US
There is a precedent for this new wave of agencies—some more successful than others. In 2016, the Los Angeles-based entertainment firm United Talent Agency (UTA) launched a fine art division as well as galleries in Los Angeles and, later, Atlanta. Both spaces closed in 2024 and UTA’s fine art operations remain paused.
An early adopter of the agency model with a great deal more success was Art Agency, Partners, which was co-founded in 2014 by Allan Schwartzman, Amy Cappellazzo and Adam Chinn, initially as an advisory service for private collectors, museums and civic initiatives. In 2016, the firm was acquired by Sotheby’s in a deal valued at $85m; at that point, Schwartzman says the team began to experiment with providing services to artists and estates. “Artists had attorneys to turn to for estate planning but had nowhere to turn to map out a strategic curatorial plan for how their art could be positioned and cared for in the short and long term,” he says. “The thinking was sound but ahead of its time.”
In 2020, Schwartzman left to set up his own agency, Schwartzman&, where artist advisory clientele now represents around one-third of the business. The uptick in this area came in part due to shifts that have taken place in the art market since the beginning of Covid-19. As Schwartzman notes, “Out of necessity, galleries became increasingly transactional,” while simultaneously, “the first wave of baby boomer artists, upon whom this art market has ballooned, were facing end of life.”
Significant changes in collecting habits are also acutely challenging the traditional models that have underpinned the art market. “For decades, the art market kept growing and along with that, a population of artists to feed it,” Schwartzman says. “But today’s art market is like a game of musical chairs where the music stops and instead of one chair being removed dozens disappear at once. The system is shocked, stressed and grasping at ways to recover.”
With some galleries “proving remarkably responsive and resilient and many others less so”, as Schwartzman puts it, it seems that artist agencies could be the complementary model the art market needs right now.
